Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has unveiled plans for a £2bn stadium for Manchester United designed to transform the club's long-term fortunes. But questions remain about who will pay for the wider regeneration that needs to come with it
At first glance, the Trafford Rail Freight Terminal is not the stuff from which dreams are made. Occupying some 28 acres of unlovely marshalling yard and warehouses, it serves as the daily destination for nothing more glamorous than 20 clanking trainloads of cargo containers.
If Sir Jim Ratcliffe gets his way, all that is about to change. The billionaire co-owner of Manchester United this week made clear he has big ideas for the rail yard abutting the club’s existing Old Trafford ground – and much of the area beyond – as he unveiled plans for an imposing new stadium to transform the team’s fortunes.
The scene is now set for a Red Devils’ brew of interlocked deals, acquisitions and political manoeuvrings to potentially release some taxpayer cash to turn the billionaire’s architectural ambitions into reality.
It is understood by The i Paper that lobbying is already underway by Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, to persuade the Treasury to part with up to £300m to fund the transfer of the freight depot to a new site. Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who in January leant verbal support to the Trafford scheme, is expected in Manchester in the coming weeks to be shown the plans.
The £2bn replacement for Old Trafford was revealed less than 24 hours after Sir Jim had launched yet another broadside at profligacy at the club – this time accusing five Man Utd players of being “overpaid” and “not good enough”.
Sir Jim, who has been accused of penny-pinching as he battles losses, turned up at the riverside London offices of architect Norman Foster to lift the drapes on the tent-like edifice, its three spiky towers visible from 40 miles away.
It was sold as forming the centrepiece of a wider, glittering redevelopment of the existing stadium’s drab and largely unloved hinterland – at least a third of which is currently occupied by the Trafford rail freight depot.
It will also form the backdrop to a fierce behind-the-scenes battle over just who pays for what in a multi-billion pound effort to overhaul a sizeable corner of south Manchester.
Undated handout provided by Foster + Partners of a conceptual image of what the new Manchester United stadium and surrounding area could look like. Manchester United has thrown its support behind the Government???s growth agenda by announcing its intention to pursue a new 100,000-seater stadium as the centrepiece of the regeneration of the Old Trafford area. Issue date: Tuesday March 11, 2025. PA Photo. See PA story SOCCER Man Utd. Photo credit should read Foster + Partners/PA Wire. NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder.
Concept art of what the surrounding area could look like (Photo: PA)
Certainly, Sir Jim, 72, a veteran industrialist with a knack for overhauling ageing assets in pursuit of profit, delivered an intoxicating vision as he proffered the “world’s greatest football stadium” to be delivered within five years of first breaking ground.
Painting a picture of a 100,000-seat footballing cauldron surrounded by some 17,000 new homes and the promise of 92,000 jobs, he said: “It’s all about the atmosphere that we can generate in the stadium, the noise, the intimidation. You know, that rawness that you get in a great stadium… We want the fans to be five metres from the edge of the pitch.”
What he also wants, however, is Government backing – and by implication public money – for the £4.2bn transformation of the surrounding area, known as the Trafford Regeneration Scheme – without which the billionaire and his allies argue the new stadium, which will not require taxpayer funding, cannot be built.
As Sir Jim, who in 2023 paid some £1.25bn for his near 30 per cent stake in – and day-to-day control of – ManU, put it: “We can’t afford to regenerate southern Manchester. It is too big a bill for the club. We don’t need any Government funding for the stadium, but it has to be the underpinning for the regeneration.”
Omar Berrada, chief executive at the Premiership goliath, added: “We won’t be asking for taxpayer money to fund the stadium. But, at the same time, the stadium, the new build, in isolation, does not make sense if there’s not an investment in the wider generation project.”
Burnham also said that while no public cash would be spent on the stadium, taxpayers’ cash could go into the wider infrastructure plans.
At the core of this debate lies the key question of just how much public money will be needed to achieve Sir Jim’s reveries of a Mancunian Nou Camp – and what roles will be undertaken by a revolving cast of political players ranging from Burnham to Reeves, a Chancellor not known as an avid fan of Match of the Day while overseeing a fiscal landscape of rare bleakness.
Officials, experts and political figures approached by The i Paper about the project this week described a veritable gordian knot of competing interests and intricate bargains to be struck before the so-called Wembley of the North and its accompanying mosaic of restaurants, start-ups, train and tram stations and apartment blocks can come to fruition.
A case in point is the Trafford freight terminal, a frenetic hub – it works daily at maximum capacity – for goods entering and leaving the North West whose future plays a disproportionate role in the viability of the regeneration scheme.
There are long-standing plans, vigorously championed by Burnham, to move the marshalling yard operated by Canadian and Singaporean-owned company Freightliner to a new bespoke and far larger site between Manchester and Liverpool at St Helens.
In so doing, the expectation is there would be a considerable knock-on benefit for rail congestion in Manchester by removing freight traffic from the Castlefield Corridor – a notorious rail pinch point for trains heading in and out of the city which is blamed for many of the multiple delays suffered by passengers in the north.
But it is as yet unclear whether the land occupied by the freight terminal, which is owned by four separate companies including an off-shore company registered in Jersey with links to a London property developer, will need to be bought with public funds to unlock the regeneration scheme or made the subject of a public-private partnership to fund development.
It is also possible that Manchester United, which currently holds a long-term lease on a section of the terminal, will need to acquire part of the site to fully accommodate the new stadium to be built alongside the existing Old Trafford before the club’s historic home is then demolished. Currently the club owns some 100 acres of land adjacent to the existing stadium, though the vast scale of the new design – complete with its vast canopy to fend of Manchester’s rainy climate – may require further acquisitions.
Undated handout provided by Foster + Partners of a conceptual image of what the new Manchester United stadium and surrounding area could look like. Manchester United has thrown its support behind the Government???s growth agenda by announcing its intention to pursue a new 100,000-seater stadium as the centrepiece of the regeneration of the Old Trafford area. Issue date: Tuesday March 11, 2025. PA Photo. See PA story SOCCER Man Utd. Photo credit should read Foster + Partners/PA Wire. NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder.
An artist’s impression of the new stadium design (Photo: PA)
Representatives of Sir Jim did not immediately respond to questions on whether the club expected to need to buy land for the new stadium.
Critics say the result is a distinct lack of clarity as to who needs to buy what, from whom and, crucially, for how much.
Nathan Evans, leader of the Conservative group on Trafford Council, the local authority whose area of responsibility includes the 230-acre regeneration site, said that while the proposal for the new stadium and the wider scheme was welcome, it currently lacks vital detail.
“It is unclear how the freight terminal is going to get moved and who’s going to pay for it and that needs some real clarification. How much is it going to cost and what is the wider benefit to the area? What level of government funding is involved? I do think we need to know.”
Freightliner said it was “working closely with all stakeholders” on options to spark the regeneration scheme. A spokesperson said: “A full relocation is one option under consideration but, whatever the outcome it is imperative that we retain the ability to grow rail freight.”
But a senior rail freight industry source told The i Paper the uncertainty meant was nervousness that a relocation of the freight terminal could be imposed before operators were ready or an alternative site was operational.
The source said: “If all parties can find a way of coming together to do a deal that works for them all it could be a win-win-win. The issue will be if the parties involved want to get ahead with no regard to Freightliner as a commercial business. [The site] may well end up being compulsory purchased, but if they did that in a hostile way there would be major consequences.”
Such acrimony, for now at least, seems unlikely. A well-placed source familiar with the regeneration plans said this week’s announcement by Sir Jim was in effect the missing piece of the puzzle to fire the starting pistol on plans which have already been the subject of behind-the-scenes horsetrading between Westminster and Manchester.
It is understood that Burnham has been in discussions with Reeves and the Treasury over funding of between £200m and £300m for rail infrastructure improvements including the opening of the St Helens freight park, known as ILP North, to enable Freightliner’s transfer from Trafford. The expectation is that this will then create a cascade effect of freeing up land and attracting private investment and developers to the regeneration scheme.
For his part, the Manchester Mayor was this week at pains to underline that the rebirth of Trafford and alongside it the spiritual home of Man Utd has implications far beyond the regeneration scheme itself. Speaking on Wednesday at an international property developing conference on the French Riviera, Burnham said the scheme would “kickstart” infrastructure schemes across the region. He said: “People need to get their heads around this. This is not just one project, it is rethinking the North of England for the 21st century.”
In a move doubtless designed to demonstrate momentum, Burnham revealed he is pressing forward with the formation of a mayoral development corporation (MDC) – a special statutory body authorised by Parliament to exercise wide-ranging powers in delivering regeneration schemes. According to government guidelines, the roles that a Trafford MDC could take on include directly constructing infrastructure or buildings as well as making compulsory purchases or land or assets.
Experts warn that both the football club and those in charge of running Manchester will have to ensure they do not lose sight of bringing both fans and community with them as the machinations unfold over a project which many argue has comparisons with the London 2012 Olympics.
Dr Paul Widdop, a lecturer in sports business at Manchester Metropolitan University, who also lives close Old Trafford, said: “The area in question is currently seen as a bit of no man’s land – it is similar in many ways to the part of East London used for the Olympics before it was redeveloped. It has lots of potential for renewal.
“But what we haven’t seen addressed yet is how you bring people with you. Trafford at the moment has lot of small businesses – tyre shops, mechanic – and you wonder where they are going to fit into this. I think there is already in Manchester a lot of concern about corporatist redevelopments that bring in big brands and big names.”