The ground that is, rather than our footballing principles. With average home attendances one of the more modest in the Premiership at just under 24,000, how long can Fulham continue stretching the budgets of their business model to stay competitve in the Prem?

It's a fact of life that money talks, nowhere more so than the frenzied world of football and its madcap monetary principles. At Fulham we start every season on the back foot wondering just how much will be drawn down for the manager to strengthen his squad, while anxiously looking over our shoulders to see who's hovering to lure our star names away. It's been that way for as long as I've followed Fulham, except for a very brief spell in the late 1990's as we climbed the leagues.

In the absence of any hard news on the next manager - and with it no current transfer activity so much as hinted at - the club web site has been concentrating in recent days on pushing season ticket sales. Their message, as you'd expect, is that take up is brisk with limited capacity spare. Is that in fact the case? Most sections of the ground still have space. There are no Europa nights to look forward to this time around, prices in some sectors have risen dramatically, and in case you hadn't noticed there's a real recession on. For the first time in years even Manchester United are reporting slower than usual uptake.

Fulham's average home gate is approximately double that of our glorious season of elevation to the Prem under Tigana, but have we now hit the glass ceiling? The club have the plans approved to fill in the corners and take capacity closer to 30,000. The board say however there is no timescale for doing this while we still fail to sell out 50% of our home matches. A scheme to expand the Putney End (effectively making it double decker and thus our 'home' end) and possibly add a second tier to the Riverside would move the club closer to a 35,000 seater capacity, putting us on a par with the likes of West Ham, Spurs and Everton. And that would be our limit - while the three clubs just mentioned are all desperate for a move to more grandiose stadia.

And are we really capable of drawing in that support, all funnelling down the narrow streets of SW6? Getting to night matches in the rush hour is a pretty daunting logistical exercise as it is, particularly hard on those who live some way outside the capital.

Which is where the majority of Fulham fans now live. My Dad dragged me down to CC aged six because he was born and raised in the borough, but that old working-class community has long since vanished. Not too many of the yuppie fraternity alongside the Thames care much for FFC or football.

So here's the rub. Would you wish to see the club grow and prosper at a purpose built ground away from the Cottage? A modern ground in the SW London suburbs with attendances that enabled us to march with the biggest of names, not just in the Prem but as one of European football's top sides?

Yes, I remember only too vividly the campaign all those years ago when Hill wanted to move us out of our ancestral home and the Fulham 2000 movement that fought him. I actually ferried Johnny Haynes across town in my car from the BBC to the press launch, along with George Best. But nothing stays the same forever, so why get sentimental over cold hard concrete and a patch of grass?
Over to you, would you trade the Cottage to make FFC a footballing powerhouse of the future?