Liverpool have announced plans for a second public consultation about their latest proposed expansion of Anfield. The £60 million investment will see another 7,000 seats added to the capacity to take Anfield above 61,000 and nudge it alongside Spurs and Arsenal to be the second or third biggest ground in England. The 1990 English champions expect the stand to be completed in 2022. Anfield’s capacity was just 45,000 as recently as 2016 and Liverpool are playing catch up in more ways than one after stagnating in the 1990s and 2000s as Manchester United steamed ahead on and off the field. But Liverpool’s ambitious American owners continue to invest and they know the demand, with 23,000 waiting for a season ticket, is there to see the second biggest club in England, the current European and World champions. (You have no idea how painful that is to write.)
Manchester City intend to build another stand at their home, but they don’t have the demand that Liverpool or United boast. They’re trying to build it though and had you told me a decade ago that City’s average crowd would be 54,000, I would have laughed. Several rivals are closing in on United, financially and in terms of attendances.
Thirty-two miles to the east, Old Trafford remains the biggest football ground in England. Its capacity has been reduced by 2,000 to 73,500 in the last three years, chiefly to accommodate more spaces for fans with disabilities. The ground now has some of the best disabled facilities in England and they will improve with more spaces from higher vantage points inside the stadium. Construction work is going on now, with new lift towers at both ends, and the whole stadium has been given a much-needed lick of paint in the last two years.
Unlike Liverpool, United are looking to introduce safe standing sections and will, subject to approval from the Safety Advisory Group, trial a section of up to 1,500 seats this year.
But United, so long the most forward-thinking club when it came to stadium development, have long been overtaken. United once had the best training ground too, but Spurs now have a better training ground and stadium.
Old Trafford has not had a major development since 2006, one that the Glazers did sign off after taking over in 2005. The stadium is let down by the single-tiered main stand and a grey roof that slopes too steeply. It’s still a great football ground, a cauldron of tightly packed red seats that has been built up and up and up, but if the under-fire Glazers want to show a long-term commitment to their ownership then they should invest like Liverpool’s owners are doing.
On Wednesday, United may have sent a mass email out inviting fans to apply for tickets for any of the remaining home games this season (apart from the next home defeat to City), but demand is still big and far more consistent than Real Madrid and Barcelona, two of the three other biggest clubs in the world along with United. There is an average of 14,000 empty seats for Real Madrid home games. There are next to none for United’s league games. Barcelona’s crowd of 60,295 for their last home game was 38,000 short of capacity.
I long thought that the ownership model of Barça or Madrid was a panacea for all the ills of football, but having seen both at close hand I’m not convinced. The politics and shifting plates of power are damaging. Club presidents need to be voted in and are not inclined to sanction major infrastructure projects on their watch since they’ll likely be at the cost of trophies and first-team investment. Camp Nou and the Bernabéu have been slated for development for years: neither has started.
United think their ownership model is more stable than either Spanish giant. Show it, then, by investing to make Old Trafford even better. There was talk recently of Boris Johnson’s government bidding to stage a World Cup with the final in football’s heartland of the north. Old Trafford had two of its major expansions ahead of the 1966 World Cup and the 1996 European Championships.
I met some City fans at the recent derby who objected to taxpayer support for the 1966 development. In 2020, Old Trafford is not far off being able to stage a World Cup final – it only needs one more section of quadrants to reach the 80,000 minimum capacity. The space is already there.
I stressed the importance of United investing in Old Trafford to Ed Woodward recently and he replied, “We’ve invested £100m in the last eight to ten years, £20m this year (2019) alone, but we recognise that we need to do more. We’re looking at an investment plan while maintaining what makes Old Trafford special. Part of its allure is the fact that it is a stadium that was built in 1910. If you totally change it then you can change the feel of it. Our vision for it is that we don’t want to radically change that look and feel.
“If you have Old Trafford and you regenerate, rejuvenate and keep it modern but keep it feeling like it’s Old Trafford, then that’s the perfect solution for us.”
OK, but United’s reluctance to think big not only denies more fans the chance of seeing the team (maybe that’s a good thing given the state of affairs), but sends out a message that the owners are there to extract as much from the club as possible with only limited investment. With no plan B to replace the owners, no likely suitors to pay the $4 billion asking price for a club United insist is absolutely not for sale, the current owners should invest in bigger and better facilities for the supporters who’ve backed them. Manchester United should have the highest crowds in the world, even with this average team. Build space for them and they will fill those extra seats.
From top dogs to also-rans: Manchester United’s new reality
