Preston North End undersoil heating and Desso pitch latest as ‘significant investment’ made
The wear and tear of PNE’s pitch was noticed at times last season
Preston North End have explored an alternative plan to undersoil heating and a Desso pitch for the time being.
Last summer, the intention to install undersoil heating and a Desso pitch, in 12 months’ time, was outlined. Manager Paul Heckingbottom admitted he noticed issues in the second half of last season, but was firm in his view that he didn’t want to hear any complaints over it from players.
PNE CEO Peter Ridsdale has now reiterated the solution that North End have explored for now. It has previously been communicated that a Desso pitch costs £1million, with undersoil heating £400-500k.
“The way in which this club operates is I get told at the start of every season, or just before when we're doing the budgets, ‘This is how much cash the family are prepared to put in’,” said Ridsdale. “If you want to spend another five million on the academy, you've got to spend five million less on the first team.
“If you want to put a new pitch down and whatever, undersoil heating, that comes out of the wage bill for the first team. I know in the past I've been criticised saying that doesn't come out of P&S rules; I've never said it does. It comes out of cash. I've got so much cash that I've got to spend on the club each year.
“My priority in the short term is to use as much of that as I can on the first team. And therefore, the balance on what you do with the academy, if you could, is almost non-existent in the short term, because if I spend more to do what we've just been saying with the academy, by definition I spend less on the first team.
“And I can't afford to spend less, because our wage bill is already 21st, or 22nd, in the Championship already. It's (the pitch) a focus because that's where we win or lose games. The problem with the pitch is if we put a Desso pitch down, which costs a million quid, what we have to do is have undersoil heating first.
“You can't put a Desso pitch down that lasts ten years, and then dig it up and spend a million quid to put undersoil heating down in two or three years' time. If you put undersoil heating down first, without the Desso pitch, the pitch we've got would crumble.
“So, what we're doing is we're investing in one of these big balloon tent things, which covers the whole of the pitch. And then, at the sign of any cold weather, the tent goes up and you can still work underneath it by cutting the grass or whatever.
“That is a significant six figure sum of investment, we think will get us over the problem in the short term, of not having an extra one-and-a-half million pounds to spend. If I had, I'd spend it on a player, not a Desso pitch.”
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