Stadium Expansion Bug??

I've been playing with Gloucester, and have just managed to get the promoted to the EPL.

They play in a 4,500 capacity ground which is owned by another team (non-league Cirencester Town), and every now and then I ask for a ground expansion, to which I get the standard "unfortunatly the club doesnt own the stadium and therefore are unable to expand it's capacity" - no problem there (although it did make competing in the Championship in a 4,500 stadium a challenge).

After promotion to the EPL, I asked them for expansion and got the same reply. However, the very next day, I get a message "The board have announced plans to enlarge the stadium by 8,000 seats"

Also, despite the club being around $4m in the red, the club has decided not to take out a loan but pay for the whole thing up front in cash, leading to the club now being $29m in debt (which resulted in my planned improvement to youth and training facilities being cancelled).

My questions are:

1. Why did they go from not being able to expand the stadium due to not owning it, to anouncing a 8,000 expansion (trippling the capacity) overnight?

2. Why wasn't a loan taken out for it?

3. Given it will still be a whole lot smaller than every other stadium in the EPL (and probably the Championship), why wouldn't they just build me a propper sized stadium?

Would you call this a bug or just one of the quirks of the game? Either way, going to be interesting seeing how I go in the EPL with a $30m debt and (for the next 8 months at least) a stadium capacity of 3,400.

I doubt you would be able to buy a whole stadium for just $25m...I think your club would have been in all sorts of trouble.

Get as many free transfers as your wage budget will allow and sell them on for a profit 6 or 12 months later, get that $25m reduced as much as you can...eventually it will get to the point where you'll surely either have it expanded again (to at least 20,000) or they'll announce a new stadium.

Short of a takeover I can't really see a new stadium until the finances of the club improve...and you play a huge part in that.

The reason for the sudden expansion is that the stadium needed to meet minimum capacity requirements for playing in the EPL. As for taking out a loan, i can't answer that but i agree it would have been a better option than paying it all up front. Hopefully you won't be in the red too long given the large TV money you get in the EPL.

Nice job getting the Tigers that far, but how did you end up playing as them? I spend my life in eternal hope of them appearing in the BSS but I've never seen it happen.

Having no knowledge of the internals of the game, I don't know whether this is possible, but they really should have a flag that would make them buy a new stadium at the earliest opportunity. For those who don't know their situation, Gloucester City were made homeless after their ground ended up under 7ft of water during the 2007 floods (you could tell the depth by how much of the goalposts was sticking out). As they're a Southern League Premier side with no benefactor they've no chance of buying a ground themselves and they're looking to the politicians to find a way to bring them back. As you say, in real life it's ridiculous to imagine they wouldn't have come back long before reaching the Prem, but I don't know if the game can do anything about that.

Hi! I'm in 2021/22 with Eastleigh, been in the Premiership for 5 seasons, won it AND the Champions League last season. Started with a 2500 seater (around that), kept asking for expansion, council would not allow, at some point in the Championship board finally gives in and decides to build a new stadium and takes out a loan of £7M, I end up with a 13100 seater stadium...Not bad, but still quite small...

Now, the board have approved expansion of the current stadium about 2 seasons ago, as well as training and youth facilities improvements, however, nothing has come through yet, nor it shows when the expansion will be ready...whenever I ask the board I get the reply that its getting done...Bug? Anyone? Thanks!

Hahaha... you pay 7M GBP for a new 13k stadium, I pay around 12M GPBP (25M AUD) for only a 8,000 extension, bring the total capacity up to 12k (of which I'll still be paying 20% rent as I still don't own the ground)?? Oh well, what can you do, just part of the challenge.

auberius - I never knew the history about the original Gloucester ground being flooded, but just looked it up and it seems you are right in fact it was the 3rd time in less than 10 years it had been flooded).

It took me many a re-load at 20th of June (or thereabouts) to get them to appear, but I was after a sub-1000 rep team to play Dafuge's challenge, and I managed to get a few of them to get promoted to the BSN/S, but I liked the added challenge of them ground sharing.