Portsmouth backed to expand Fratton Park to 25,000 capacity | OneFootball

Portsmouth are continuing to look into plans to expand Fratton Park, with FLW providing some fan insight into the situation

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Talks of Portsmouth's plans to expand their home of Fratton Park rumble on, with FLW's fan pundit, Miltos, providing us with some fan perspective on the situation.

Built in 1889, Fratton Park has been the home of Portsmouth FC since its opening in the same year of it's contrusction, and has been the host of thousands of football matches since.

Whilst numerous sides across the Premier League and EFL have abandoned their home stadiums to move to newer, more modern buildings, many have chosen, or have been forced, to remain at their inaugural ground, with numerous renovations taking place in order to keep the structure up to fit.

Fratton Park is one of those, and Portsmouth don't look to be moving out anytime soon, having recently seen £15 million worth of upgrades to the stadium.

Plans to expand the ground have long been talked about, with The News reporting back in December that the key to unlocking Pompey's North Stand development vision is ‘coming to a conclusion’.

Though when the plans to expand the North Stand come to fruition is still up in the air, and for anyone to guess, the noise of the redevelopment of their home will naturally have fans talking.

Portsmouth should increase its capacity to 25,000 with Fratton Park expansion

Football League World's Portsmouth fan pundit, Miltos, has provided their thoughts on a potential expansion of Fratton Park and what sort of capacity is optimal in their eyes.

Miltos said, "I think that Fratton Park should be expanded at some point. However, I don't know if this is looking like a possibility for it to happen in the near future."The Eisner's have said about the way we're going, the only way we could realistically expect to see an increase in capacity is by us getting promoted first into the Premier League first, which part of me doesn't really agree with."I feel like we as a club should do absolutely everything to facilitate an expansion. I think that the optimal capacity, in my eyes, for us and for Fratton Park, could be around the 25,000 mark. Expand the North Stand, which I think has always been the plan. But, I personally don't see it happening, as Michael Eisner has said as well."Without the bridge, the bridge that connects Fratton Station to the stadium, it's looking increasingly unlikely that we can get it done, and I think there are still all the feasibility studies going on that haven't concluded. But I definitely think that an expansion should be something that we see, because we can support it. We have the fan base, we have the audience to support and increase like this, and we should try to do absolutely everything to see something happen in that regard."I think priority number one at present is what we do on the football pitch. I think Fratton Park is a significant increase, a significant improvement in comparison to what it was prior to the Eisners' coming in. So hats off to them for that. But we need to see more in all aspects of the football club, and I think that expanding Fratton Park should be something that happens in the near or not-so-near future."

Portsmouth's Fratton Park expansion will only benefit the club in the long-term

Although the expansion of Fratton Park will cost Pompey funds in the short-term, the long-term benefits massively outweigh the negatives.

Portsmouth almost sells out home matches on a weekly basis, meaning there is more than enough demand to add extra seats and get more fans supporting the club on a matchday.

With more seats comes more tickets, and with more tickets comes more money, which can be once again reinvested into the club to improve things both on and off the pitch.

John Mousinho has done an excellent job of taking Portsmouth back to the Championship and keeping them there on one of the smallest budgets in the division, and the club should capitalise on their recent success by beginning the expansion as soon as possible.

If Portsmouth wants to keep climbing the table and one day find themselves back in the Premier League, an expansion to Fratton Park will only help their cause.