Mike Gordon:
"We have always focused our energy and resources completely on the Main Stand - it's a very big and very expensive project! We need to make sure we do a great job bringing it to a successful completion before even considering any further changes to Anfield. Then, and only then might we take a look at Anfield Road Stand. At the right time, as with the Main Stand process, a robust research process will be undertaken to ensure there is a sustainable solution, one that works financially, before we could consider applying for full planning permission. Like the Main Stand, Anfield Road is rather complicated - there are services that run under the road as well as a number of other social and environmental issues that we will have to consider when the time is right."
Football grounds used to be a club's only source of funds other than dipping into a personal fortune as a vanity project. TV and merchandising has pushed the game way beyond the means of your average pools magnate. It now takes oligarchs or sheiks to compete at the top on a personal basis. Which came first (TV or people with more money than sense) is for another debate.
Compared to the other ways a football club can earn millions and billions, the stadium is a pretty crap investment. High risk, high cost, low return. Lowering risk and cost and increasing return is what the redevelopment is all about.
The lowest risk and highest return would be to just add corporate seats (in an existing stand) and stop right there. The additional income way outstrips the additional cost (for restaurants/ bars and smooze lounges).
So the balance between high return corporate seats and low return general admission is very delicate. Too much of one would be to build to expensively and too much of the other would kill the very reason to build in the first place - to make money (for the club).
There won't be much in the way of corporates in an extended ARE. In time and if there's an appetite for more corporates, I'm sure the club will re-look at the balance of corporates and GA before making a move - even consider more corporate in the LC and shifting general admission into a new ARE.
The club doesn't have a crystal ball. Any twitches in the process (build costs, interest rates, demand, performance on the pitch…) could see all the numbers go south very quickly. Hence the caution.