The Blackley and Middleton South MP (and United fan) on Ratcliffe and Co’s proposals for the stadium and surrounding area
Labour’s Andy Burnham claims to be confident of financial support from Labour’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, for the so-called “New Trafford”. This is the proposal to replace Manchester United’s 115 years old ground with a new state of the art, £2 billion stadium on the land of an adjacent rail freight hub.
No Manchester United fan or Labour politician should support these plans. I am both, and believe the proposals are an ill-thought-out concept and wrong in principle.
United’s problem is not the stadium, which has the largest capacity of any club stadium in the country, it is United’s failure to win sufficient games in the stadium. This is partly the consequence of the loss of focus on the key United product, football, and the poor recruitment of players. Commercial deals are vital, but they have become more important than the football.
According to the Financial Times, Manchester United’s marquee signings lose more value and faster than any other European football club. They are also less productive playing for a smaller percentage of time than other clubs’ major signings. Angel Di Maria, who United bought for £59.7 million in 2014, a British club record at the time, only played for 8% of the available time.
A new stadium will not improve the team, in fact history shows many teams moving into new grounds have a dip in form. This point was put to me succinctly while standing on the terraces at Hillsborough in the 1960s. This ground was considered one of the best in the country at the time, having invested in a large modern cantilever stand. It was regularly chosen for FA Cup semi-finals. A typically dour Yorkshireman seeing his side trailing to United, said “I’m still waiting for the bloody new cantilever stand to score a goal.”
Am I the only person to think there is a distinctly fishy smell when the part owner of United predicts imminent bankruptcy while simultaneously launching an ill-defined scheme costing £2 billion.
What don’t we know?
Some supporters suspect that New Trafford will not be owned by United but leased back from new owners (the current ground is 100% owned by United). Selling the naming rights for the stadium would be extremely lucrative as would building housing on the site of the current stadium and its environs.
Before embarking on a regeneration project, it is usual for viability and impact studies to be undertaken, not in this case. The proposals are as transparent as a block of lead and raise many questions. Inevitably the rail freight terminal would have to be moved to St Helens. Are we really in the business of moving jobs to Merseyside? I think not.
It is also rumoured that the new stadium would be prefabricated abroad and sailed up the Ship Canal and assembled. Few Manchester jobs would be created.
Unsubstantiated claims are that moving the freight would ease congestion at Manchester Piccadilly, but alternatives for potentially £300 million of public subsidy are not being considered. Maybe investment in digital signalling or investment in Platforms 15 and 16 would be more effective.
But this is typical of this scheme, where alternatives for better use of the money have been ignored.
If new homes are to be built, surely better to go with regeneration schemes whose viability has been proved. Holt Town and Victoria North would be more productive sites and help Angela Rayner hit her 1.5 million housing targets. It appears some local politicians have been bewitched by the proximity of football celebrity and lost their common sense.
On a personal note, I find deep irony in the current situation. It could have been avoided if United had accepted an offer from Manchester City Council when we were planning the 2002 Commonwealth Games. We were determined that the Games’ stadium would not become a white elephant. Our plan was to be able to convert the Games’ venue into an 80,000+ replacement or competitor for Wembley. United were the only club with sufficient support to make this viable. I had meetings with Roland Smith, who then chaired United’s board. He rejected the offer.
There were then meetings with City, who bit our hand off. Given City’s smaller fan base, the size of the ground had to be reduced but City’s new home in a state-of-the-art stadium made them attractive to first Thaksin Shinawatra and then to the Abu Dhabi United Group, effectively the Abu Dhabi state. This and the subsequent investment in the team has led to City’s recent spectacular success and then improvements in the ground. Irony or what?!
Incidentally, what is Sebastian Coe doing anywhere near a Manchester project? Does nobody remember his assault and undermining of Manchester’s bid for investment and the Olympic Games? Somebody should dig out his anti-Manchester quotes and buy him a one-way ticket back to London.
When Rachel Reeves announced her new determination to grow the economy with investment in infrastructure there was no surprise that the major schemes were in the south: the Lower Thames Crossing, Heathrow and the Cambridge-Oxford corridor. She also rather embarrassingly claimed no new runways had been built in the country since 1945. Yet her Leeds constituency has jobs dependent on the success of Manchester Airport, which of course built a new runway at the start of this century. Like a drowning person, she is clutching for any straw to save her face as a Northern MP. New Trafford is not that straw.
It would be politically obscene when the government is considering cuts to benefits and services to some of the poorest people in the country to present a cheque of hundreds of millions of pounds to a tax exile’s half-baked misbegotten scheme. Sir Jim Ratcliffe could replace the subsidy from public funds he is seeking from the money he doesn’t pay in British taxes. I doubt he would notice it.
Main image credit: @fosterandpartners / Instagram
Graham Stringer MP
Graham Stringer is an occasional columnist for Manchester Confidential. He is the Labour Member of Parliament for Blackley and Middleton South. He was elected to Parliament in 1997. Until 1999 he was on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs select committee, then was a Labour Government whip and subsequently a member of the Transport Select Committee in the last years of Labour Government. Prior to parliament he was the Leader of Manchester City Council from 1984-1996. He is credited for being a principal agent in the return of city confidence and Manchester's regeneration.
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