Al Fayed's grand vision for Fulham provokes local anger

An air of resignation has settled over the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which last week granted Fulham Football Club planning permission for a new 30,000- seat stadium, while simultaneously referring the club's application to the Department of the Environment, which is likely to call it in for a public inquiry

An air of resignation has settled over the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which last week granted Fulham Football Club planning permission for a new 30,000- seat stadium, while simultaneously referring the club's application to the Department of the Environment, which is likely to call it in for a public inquiry

The Borough, which has been battered by some 63 planning applications from Ken Bates' Chelsea Village in the past decade, has now acceded to the £70m plan from Mohamed Al Fayed's Fulham - made in the name of becoming the "Manchester United of the South", but which has aroused the fury of many local residents.

Demanding that DoE throws out the plans, Paul Mitchell, chairman of the 1,300-strong Fulham Alliance residents' group, said: "This development is far too big, and will have a dreadful impact on residents and the area, including the River Thames.

"Mohamed Al Fayed wants to build a massive business, cashing in on the money and glamour currently associated with football, and the council has rolled over."

Fulham, whose public relations are being marshalled by Al Fayed's spokesman, Max Clifford, reject that charge, arguing the club's success is "Mohamed's dream". They say they have met residents' concerns and scaled down the application, but that a 30,000 capacity is required to make the club financially viable. Otherwise, the club would have to leave Fulham, where it is admired as a model for a wide range of community work. "Mohamed just wants to do his best for Fulham and the community," Clifford says.

This battle has implications wider than merely local to the Thames - fiercely as the river will be defended by Lady Dido Berkeley, a doughty campaigner who took Fulham's previous application all the way to the House of Lords and, last year, defeated it. This expansion is driven by English football's commercial explosion since the Premier League breakaway in 1992, and the growing financial might of Manchester United.

With United having expanded Old Trafford to 67,700, every Premiership club is desperately trying to catch up (see table). Fulham's application has a section: "The Case for a New Stadium", a breathless account of football's transformation.

"English football is not 'jumpers for goal posts'," it says, "it is a billion pound a year industry. Clubs must become more commercially driven in order to survive."

The document says Al Fayed plans to make a "substantial personal financial commitment" but the club aims eventually to achieve "reasonable stability in the Premier League and financial independence."

Fayed's commitment so far has been around £60m. The stadium, should it go ahead, will bring the figure up to £130m. Fulham lost £15m last year, Fulham's managing director, Michael Fiddy, expects to lose the same amount this year, financing Jean Tigana's excellent side's likely promotion. More major investment in players will be needed to keep them in the Premier League, although Fiddy hopes the changes to the transfer system may mean Fulham can do so more cheaply.

Both Clifford and Fiddy say that Fayed has put "no limit" on his investment, which is channelled to the club through Fayed's holding company, Fulham Leisure Holdings, based in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore tax haven. Fiddy declined to predict when the club expects to become self-financing: "We want to be in [that] position, and that means being in the Premier League and having a 30,000-seater stadium. How much investment is necessary is up to the manager and the chairman."

Yet the very idea of being self-financing can be more hope than plan. In its 2000 review of football finances, the accountants Deloitte and Touche - whom Fulham enlisted to help argue their case - showed that only 12 Premier League clubs made pre-tax profits, eight made losses. On a total turnover of £670m, the average club's profit was £684,000 - a figure skewed by the exceptional performance of Manchester United, which made profits of £22m.

As the Premier League, unlike the US National Football League, has no centralised financial management, all English clubs are paddling desperately to keep pace with United. Rick Parry, Liverpool's chief executive, said that his club's expansion was necessary to compete with United. Liverpool's initially secret blueprint, backed by the city council, provoked fear and loathing in their own Anfield neighbourhood because it contained plans to demolish scores of homes. The club is now working with the community on another solution.

Clifford denies that Fayed is driven by the desire to make money. "It would be a mad investment if he did," he says. "It's Mohamed's dream, to make Fulham successful, build a great tradition. It's also real people, and Mohamed loves being with real people."

The Fulham Alliance say they are not, as some have painted them, middle-class snobs hostile to football, but say that football's explosion into a commercial leviathan has to be addressed.

"Getting 30,000 is pie in the sky," says Mitchell - the club's average gate last season was 13,000. "But even then, 30,000 may not be enough. The club hasn't made a coherent economic case, but the community is expected to pay the price."

Fulham's planning document directly compares Al Fayed's involvement with other footballing "sugar daddies", such as the late Jack Walker, of Blackburn Rovers, Sir Jack Hayward at Wolves, and even Alan Sugar, until recently at Tottenham Hotspur. Yet these examples provide salutary cautions: Hayward's Wolves have under-achieved, his reign riven by disputes, including those with his son Jonathan. Sugar, meanwhile, finally left Spurs this week after telling the BBC there had been "no high points" during his tenure in charge at White Hart Lane.

Blackburn are most directly comparable to Fulham. There, Walker's "dream" was to fund the club to the Premiership, where they would become financially self-sustaining. He was allowed by the local council to demolish three streets of homes to make way for upgrading Ewood Park to a 30,000-seater stadium. Blackburn won the Premiership in 1995, but their bubble burst when Kenny Dalglish left, and in 1999 they were relegated. Last season the club's average attendance was 19,000 and Rovers lost £19m. Now, following Walker's death, a Jersey-based trust fund continues to subsidise the club.

Paul Weston, of the Home Office-funded Federation of Stadium Communities, cites Blackburn as a "terrible example" of football's priorities being put before those of a community. He condemns Fulham's proposed development as "atrocious" and is also calling on the DoE to block it. Yet Weston believes that this is a national issue. "Because football is commercially expanding, there should be a national strategy, looking, long term, to provide proper facilities for all clubs. Instead, every club is on its own, often causing upset and mayhem to their local communities, and continually expanding."

Max Clifford denied that a £350m refinancing deal at Fayed's Harrods, also announced last week, was needed to fund Fulham's development. The suggestion that the London store could be mortgaged to benefit Craven Cottage is itself a sign of the times. Football's finances may be spiralling, but the clubs' historic neighbourhoods - as diverse as Fulham, Anfield and Ewood - are left to battle in isolation.

davidconn@freeuk.com