[All things Dundee FC]

Right, bit of a random one this, but...

I'll be working up in Dundee next month, and possibly for quite a bit longer, and I need to a team to adopt. A lifetime of supporting Shrewsbury Town and Scotland has naturally accustomed me to unrelenting joy and success. I will therefore be glory-hunting the Dees, seeing as they're clearly the better of the city's two clubs for reasons which are far too obvious to list here.

How does this all work exactly? Is the Derry or Provie Road better for atmosphere these days? Also, what about pubs? From memory most of them seem to hedge their bets by having a mixture of Dees/Arabs memorabilia on the wall, but are there any which generally belong to fans of one team or the other for TV games, matchday pints, etc?

Thank you.

 

[All things Dundee FC]

52 minutes ago, Girth said:

I’d hate to see Dundee in a soulless bucket on the outside of town.

 

 

So would I, mate. I've a lot of affection for Dens. It was the first Scottish ground I ever visited, back in the days when the  wooden benches ran all the way from the Derry End round the west of the stadium, and the Bob Shankley was an open terrace. However, it's a risk. Moving ground presents a real opportunity to generate new revenue, but it also represents a big threat to your club's identify. There are people who would have you believe that it's not worth spending money on the stadium when it could be spent on the squad. They're talking shite. Good players come and go, but a good ground is part of your matchday experience forever.  Out team quickly improved with the extra money generated by our move, but the matchday experience still became much less enjoyable.

At Shrewsbury ten years ago things were bleak. We had a shiny new doctor's waiting room next to a Sainsbury's for a stadium, our traditional badge had been replaced with a "modern" clipart version, and our traditional colours had been altered. The fans had to fight to fix all of this, but it would have been so much easier if these mistakes hadn't been made in the first place. 

One thing we still don't have and are still pissed off about is the lack of a supporters' bar. Essential in an out of town ground, and the only redeeming feature of Doncaster's new lego stadium. You need to all be pressuring the club to include stuff like this and safe standing now, whilst things are still in the planning stage, cos once things have been done it's hard to change them back.

One problem you might have is that at Dens, like the old Gay Meadow, your singer like to congregate on the side. When we moved stadiums they all wanted to stay there, in a corner by the away fans (a bit like at Motherwell) and it's way harder to generate a noise that resonates round our ground from there. Again, thinking carefully at the planning stage about where the singing section is going to be and how to go about filling it is definitely worth doing.

Good luck with it all!

[All things Dundee FC]

34 minutes ago, stu2910 said:

You’re probably right and anything up to 1500 could be full regularly.

And I saw that too but there was nothing else said about it. Reckon like most things the club does nowadays no one really knows yet.

As a fanbase I think you should all start lobbying in favour early and vociferously.

I'm a Shrewsbury fan (of Scottish extraction, hence why I'm on this forum), and the safe standing section we've just installed has hugely improved the noise levels in what was previously a very bland, typical modern stadium. 

I've seen people discussing the new Dundee stadium approvingly comparing it to places like Rotherham or Doncaster or Chesterfield or whatever like this is a good thing. It's not - they're all soulless wee Ikea stadiums surrounded by Superbowls and TGI Fridays instead of pubs. Yes they can generate a bit of a roar on derby day, but who can't? Most of the time they're just depressing. People slag off somewhere like Cappielow or Somerset Park - or indeed the Derry End - for being knackered, but for me these places are way preferable as they're part of the soul of their clubs in the way that new identikit grounds simply never can be....unless they're carefully built to be unique of course.

Fortunately it looks like Aberdeen are about to do the right thing and install standing in their new stadium, which will hopefully start a domino effect.

[All things Dundee FC]

Are there any plans to include a safe-standing section in the new stadium?

New-build out of town stadiums can be dreadfully soulless places, especially on days when the away support's shite. Having one end of rail seats would instantly make the place much less identikit and probably greatly improve the atmosphere too.

[All things Dundee FC]

2 hours ago, Ludo*1 said:

Shrewsbury forum listing Jones as a midfielder: http://blueandamber.proboards.com/thread/97860/sam-jones

Shrewsbury fan here. To be honest we have no clear idea what his best position is as we barely saw him, but attacking central midfielder seems to be the general consensus.

I think he'd probably best suit a formation with 4 layers, e.g. a 4-2-3-1, played just behind the striker. Can't see him being much use in a 4-4-2, not least because for some reason he seemed to be almost permanently unfit last season. I have no idea if that was his fault or not, but I don't remember him being officially listed as injured too often. I do remember one report of him being physically sick in training trying to keep up with all the running the rest of the (extremely fit) squad was doing, but that might well be bollocks.