Grimsby are reaping the rewards of failing to invest in infrastructure, and I can see no solution for them without the advent of a lunatic benefactor. While almost every club in the country invested heavily in ground redevelopment from the late 1980s onwards, Grimsby preferred to direct funds to the playing side, and enjoyed eleven seasons in the second tier through the 1990s into the early 2000s - they are always crowing about that. But the legacy is a rotting training ground and some dilapidated sheds for a 'stadium', and there is no money to do anything about it. The cost of redevelopment post-Covid is prohibitive for all but the richest clubs. Unbelievably, the club itself has spent almost nothing on ground redevelopment for 85 years (the supporters paid for the Pontoon Stand in 1961 and Findus paid for the current Young's Stand in 1981) - Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister and minnows Ipswich Town had just been elected to the Football League. Previous owners of the club have made a bed that is increasingly difficult to lie in.
Yes, and they have had to spend a huge chunk of the FA Cup money they got making their 100 plus year old main stand safe and to comply with modern day health and safety legislation.
Whilst new stadiums have been mooted on Europark, which you could only get to if they bused the fans in, or on the docks which is in itself in a complete state of disrepair, or on the site of the old Freeman Street flats but that is now rumoured to have been sold to Aldi. They are going nowhere anytime soon but more pertinent to that their owners or the council simply don't have the funds to take on such a massive project.
Grimsby is a dead end town, that doesn't have a lot going for it. No tourism, no Cathedral, no Castle, not even any nice historic buildings. I'd swop them shopping centers but even Freshney Place is now at least half empty and that shopping centre is basicly the town centre!
The Football Club would need an investor(s) of around the billionaire proportions to bring it into the 21st century..and there aren't many of them in the Grimsby area.
They are stuck solid in the 1980's as far as the ground infrastructure goes and the only way to change that is if they had a sudden rise through the leagues to the Premiership and to reap in the riches that would bring but that looks about as possible as Mark Kennedy promising to play open and attacking football to the fans of the next team he manages.
Their league position now, the changing of managers that can't get it right and all the other ingredients are only going in one direction and that's downwards. I can't think of a ground in the EFL that is currently more delapitated than Blunder Park, much like their fan base which is stuck in the 1980's with it.
If they were to be relegated again to the National League or beyond they could well eventually find their biggest game of the season could be a Cleethorpes derby whilst we could be taking on their biggest rivals, Hull and Leeds.
