The Old Trafford stadium

Man United Unveil Plans for New Stadium

Manchester United are one of the biggest and most successful football clubs in the world. And yet, in recent times, they have become, dare we say it, something of a laughing stock. Since Sir Alex Ferguson left the club, over a decade ago now, at the end of the 2012/13 season, they have failed to win the Premier League title.

Their standards have slipped dramatically and they have finished sixth or worse five times in the post-Fergie era. This season they look almost certain to end up in the bottom half and there was even a suggestion at one stage they might be involved in a relegation battle. Prior to finishing seventh in 2013/14, they hadn’t ended a top-flight campaign outside the top three since before the Premier League began, back in 1990/91.

Fans of other clubs, so used to seeing the Red Devils dominate, have really enjoyed this decline and social media has been ripe with memes mocking the club. The drop in standards has not been confined to their league performance or woeful signings though. Old Trafford, the so-called “Theatre of Dreams”, remains the biggest stadium in English club football but its poor facilities, crumbling stands and, in particular, its leaky roof, have all been the subject of ridicule.

Change on and off the pitch will take time and whilst the team’s revival is not guaranteed, improving the settings in which fans can watch bang-average football does now look like it will take place. On the 11th of March, the club revealed that they plan to build an incredible new stadium, with a futuristic video showing us what to expect.

100,000 Fans, £2bn, Five Years to Build


The club released a video in which renowned architect Lord Norman Foster spoke about the incredible new design and how it is hoped it can be brought to fruition within five years.

It will easily be the biggest and most expensive stadium ever built in the UK, with the 100,000 capacity surpassing the 90,000 that the new Wembley holds. In terms of cost, the national stadium cost about £750m, which equates to around double that today. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which “only” holds just under 63,000 people, cost around £1bn and was completed in 2019.

However, it is a fact (a sort of Donald Trump-style “fact”) that the last time a major UK construction project came in on budget was under the reign of Queen Victoria, so that £2bn budget is certain – we dare say certain, rather than merely almost certain – to rise. To give more genuinely factual context to that assertion, Everton’s new stadium was expected to cost around £300m and came in at closer to £800m, whilst Spurs’ development had an initial projection of £250m, which rose to £400m… and then came in, as said, at around £1bn!

Just as these huge builds rarely hit their financial budgets, so too do they frequently overrun in terms of the time it takes to complete them, the two factors going hand-in-hand to some degree. But United are being especially optimistic with their claims about how long their new stadium will take to build, with five years as the aim.

Foster, who attended the University of Manchester, and whose father worked in Trafford Park, was the architect for the “Gherkin” building in London, the Reichstag Dome in Berlin, and many other landmark buildings around the world. He obviously knows a thing or three about this sort of gigantic project, though the scale of this is, even for him, unprecedented.

In the video about the project, Foster claims that prefabrication will be key to the quick build time. He states that they will use the “network of (the) Manchester Ship Canal” to “ship in components, 160 of them, Meccano-like.” It is very obviously a bold, brave and exciting design but even with the vast expertise, experience and skill of the many brilliant minds that will come together to create it, we would be amazed if it comes in on time and on budget.

More than a Stadium


The mammoth project will have the staggering stadium at its centre, with the three huge masts, the “Trident” set to soar 200 metres above it and be visible 25 miles away. But, of course, there will be far more to this than simply an ultra-modern, 100,000-seat stadium.

The design will see the club rebuild Old Trafford station, with Foster stating that the stadium will not be “a fortress surrounded by a sea of cars”. There is, naturally, an environmental aspect to the build, with the huge umbrella above the fringes of the stadium designed to collect both rainwater and solar energy. It will be walkable and very well-connected to public transport, designed to be a “mixed-use mini-city” and a “global destination”.

The public plaza will be twice as big as Trafalgar Square, with the famous architect behind it all saying that it will be “arguably the largest public space in the world”. There will be shops, streets, bars, restaurants and even 17,000 new homes.

The Finances


United released some very flashy images of the proposed stadium and development, with Foster presenting it as the perfect blend of old and new. Bold claims were made about the speed at which this will all happen but very little was said about how it will be funded.

The club claim that it will be worth more than £7bn a year to the UK economy once complete, and will create almost 100,000 new jobs (presumably including those in its construction rather than solely permanent ones). It will help further regenerate the area and given all this, United are sure to be seeking as much public money as they can get. The club are sitting on a huge debt pile and have been involved in some very serious cost-cutting of late that has attracted a lot of criticism.

Quite where a £2bn (and then some) stadium sits within this picture is unclear, as is the question of where United will play whilst it is being built. There are concerns about fans being priced out, the environmental impact, how such a large stadium will impact the atmosphere and more.

All that said, most United fans are sure to be cautiously optimistic and it is certainly very, very exciting. If they can pull it off it will further cement their place as one of the richest clubs in the world, giving them even more money to waste on the next Antony!

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