New stadium won't open until 2018, after season away

Forget a decent striker, a new stadium for Tottenham Hotspur remains the team's white whale. Spurs remain unable to resolve the final obstacle to begin construction in earnest. According to the team, Archway Steel are challenging the Compulsory Purchase Order in High Court.

This keeps the final parcel of land needed by Spurs out of their grasp for the foreseeable future. So what does this mean for the stadium?

Delays, delays, delays. This probably isn't getting resolved for a while. According to the club, the new stadium will not open until the 2018/19 season at the earliest, which is two years later than the previous estimate. Thanks to those delays, they will have to speed construction up, which precludes doing what Athletic Bilbao did and playing in a mostly finished stadium while construction is completed.

In fact, in this announcement, Spurs noted that will have to play in another stadium for a season to get the construction completed as quickly as possible. There are no great options in this case and many have thrown around the idea of playing in MK Dons' stadium as the most efficient solution. This option has been met with all the enthusiasm one would expect. Perhaps we'll play a season in the Olympic Stadium to help West Ham financially transition to the Championship.

The worst part of this decision in that it means Spurs will be not be in Tottenham for a year, which means an entire season where local merchants will not be able to benefit from the money that every match day brings. Given the state of the community, this could prove disastrous for some local merchants. And considering that Spurs are trying to make a significant investment in the community here, it's almost tragic.

It is difficult to know what to make of Archway Steel's position here. I know for some the inclination will be to side with the little guy against the big bad club and claim Levy is trying to lowball them out of their family business. And who knows, maybe that is the case. I find it strange that they are literally the only land owner that has yet to come to some sort of agreement with the club. In any case, while don't know what kind of negotiations have taken place, we do know that this whole thing is going to hurt the entire community.