It has been nearly seven months since Manchester United announced their plans to build an ambitious new 100,000-seater stadium on the same site as Old Trafford with a glitzy video presented by world-famous architect Norman Foster. "Today marks the start of an incredibly exciting journey to the delivery of what will be the world’s greatest football stadium," said an excited Sir Jim Ratcliffe on the day of the announcement in March.
That journey, however, has proved to be a slow one fraught with potholes and snags. The project already faces a race against time to meet the five-year deadline Foster and Ratcliffe boasted of as the club do not currently own all the land they want to build on, said land is proving far more expensive than they had first thought, and they do not have planning permission or even a confirmed architect.
The proposed stadium threatens to be less flashy and ambitious than it looked at its unveiling as the giant canopy encasing the ground, essentially the unique selling point of the whole project, is in danger of being canned.
GOAL takes a look at the main problems United are grappling with in their bid to actually pull off the building of 'The Wembley of the North'...