MATT UGGLA hopes to one day own the LNER Community Stadium, whilst discussing the off-the-field progress of York City.

Uggla revealed to the York Hospital Ball podcast that in order for the club to maximise potential revenue, that owning the stadium could be pivotal, speaking on potential events could be held and admitting that the club are hindered when it comes to income.

The York co-chairman is pleased to launch the Junior Reds initiative after discussing the ‘decaying’ state of the football club prior to his arrival, and spoke on the improvement in relationships between himself, the Stadium Management Company [SMC] and City of York Council.

“To me, it’s quite shocking, it’s one of the things that is a bare minimum,” Uggla told the York Hospital Ball podcast, that can be found here.

“We came into the club and it was decaying, and I think it had been for a while, there has been so much this year that we have had to clean up and try and get right.

“Things at the stadium, I won’t go into it, but if you looked into to you’d go ‘jesus, what has gone on here? Who is crazy enough to have done that?’.

“Like the junior reds, I think there will be a lot more initiatives like that over the next 12 months, it’s just that now we have finally dealt with a lot of the things over here, there will be a lot more things like that.

“It’s frustrating because it’s such a good stadium, if you could somehow buy it or own it then it would be a gamechanger for the football club because of all of the things that you can do.

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“I think that we’ve been hindered by that, Hollywood Bowl must make more money than any other Hollywood Bowl in the country on a Saturday, and we’re losing out on that.

“We’re hindered, we can’t have other events, York is such a great city and I don’t think there is really a venue like this stadium where you could do events in the Summer or concerts.

“We’re hindered because all of that money that we would take, we would put back into the football club, that’s what we want to do.

“It is what it is, we knew what we were signing up for and over time we can kind of chip away at it.

“One day, I think it’s imperative that we own our own stadium.”

Uggla would go on to discuss the improvements being made between the shared relationship between himself, the SMC and the council, admitting that he felt more aligned in everyday communication to help better the football club.

Uggla told the York Hospital Ball podcast: “It’s improved dramatically, I think that they were probably a bit disillusioned by predecessors.

“We have a really good relationship with the SMC now, Pete who is up there and Martin are really good guys, they try and help us wherever they can.

“They obviously have rules and regulations which they are not allowed to do, which is fair, there’s no malice or anything like that.

“The council, again, the relationship has gotten a lot better over the course of the year and it’s just making both people understand how important the football club is to both entities.

“The council think that we’re a pillar of the community and that we should be treated and be helped as much as we possibly can.”

City have so far sold a confirmed 2,222 season tickets, despite a small increase in prices, which will be reinvested back into the club with the hopes of becoming more sustainable.

Uggla also explained that there were no huge plans to improve the York training ground, with promotion into the Football League required before any resounding differences were made, despite the previous complaints of former manager Neal Ardley.

“It helps in a variety of ways, everything kind of floods into the first-team or the youth teams,” Uggla detailed.

“We’re not pocketing it, it’s just a case of it floods in and at the moment, we’re not the most sustainable club, but it allows us to get closer to that sustainability.

“We built a gym down there this year which helps us a lot, for the level it’s a very good training ground.

“Neal [Ardley, former manager] might be used to Wimbledon’s and things like that, then you have the other side of the coin where Adam has come in and said ‘this is amazing, what a great training ground’.

“There are perspectives that can always be improved, there are other things that we would like to improve like the drainage.

“We want to spruce it up a little bit, but the major changes to the training ground should come once we are a league club, right now just do bits here and there.

“We don’t need to get all of the bells and the whistles until you earn that.”