Article in the DT about Citeh expanding their ground to 70,000+ also mentions United plans to expand to 95,000. One the of the comments suggests the OT expansion wont happen because since Glazers took over United haven't had the moneyy to reinvest in their ground like they did under the old regime. So, if the Glazers weren't there, would OT have been a mega ground by now?
How are City going to fill their expanded ground, when they can't fill the one they have got? Chinese 'glory hunters' anybody?
There are millions of asians in the world so it will be possible to fill old toilet/theatre of silence.However,the atmosphere of the Camp Nou or the Santiago could never be replicated with such a plastic and transient fan base...hilarious today watching the City fans make all the noise and all the plastic empty seats.."taxi to the airport.."
The atmosphere inside The San Mames must be great as you've not mentioned it, but rather comment on the two biggest teams in Spain. And not quite sure what the atmosphere in Spanish football grounds has to do with ground expansion in Manchester.
The problems with expanding OT are: 1. It would overshadow the houses on Railway Road south of the stadium. Until those houses are gone we can't expand. If you find OT on Google Maps you'll see that four of the houses on that road have been bought up and bulldozed by the club in prep for the expansion, but until we can get the rest the expansion will go nowhere, money or no money. 2. If we build the South Stand up to the level of the north, we will block out the light to the pitch. That could result in the grass growing poorly and cutting up, like it does at Wembley. 3. The costs of bridging the railway line with a new stand would mean that any financial benefits to the club would be minimal. The expansion could well cost more than the entire cost of the stadium to date. Not really worth it when it would only increase capacity by around 20% and probably wouldn't add any additional executive boxes. To be honest I don't think the plc would have expanded OT any more than they did. They were extremely risk averse and these issues would probably have stopped them dead. I'd expect the expansion to happen eventually, but it'll take time to buy up the houses and sort out the pitch issue first.
Re:1 - I thought they now owned the majority of the houses, with only a few if any outstanding. Going back to 1995, at least 17 of the remaining 28 houses opposite (Numbers 10-72, with 34-40 demolished) have been sold and ALL of them have been leasehold. This either means that United have previously bought them but realise that there is no point demolishing them until they plan to expand the stadium, so are recouping some of the money, OR, that the existing owners have held on to the Freehold knowing that the price will be inflated as and when United decide to extend, which they wouldn't have done if they weren't willing to sell at the inflated price, so negotiations should be brief. Re:2 - That's easy to solve, the stadium simply needs a retractable reflective surface mounted on the North Stand. Re:3 - The costs are slowly coming down as building technology improves, I suspect that the astronomical costs of having new plans drawn up using these new building methods are actually putting them off finding out what the actual costs would be. I agree that the PLC were generally risk averse, but they were the ones who bought up the houses opposite in the first place even though at the time there was no plan to expand, so even they had it on the cards. What we can assume is that with owners a rich as those down the road is that there would already be bulldozers on site!
I think we should consider building down into the stadium, although quite costly it would solve the problems of the railway issue. The pitch may lose a little light but i am sure they can do something about that
