Read the inside story of our new stadium launch

Nerves because this was a big moment in Manchester United history. The last time plans such as these were announced was in the early 1900s. John Henry Davies was United’s club president then, and Ernest Mangnall our ‘secretary’. They didn’t have football ‘managers’ back then. Mangnall and Davies gathered pressmen around, and informed them that the club wanted to build a 100,000-capacity arena. It was an astonishingly ambitious plan for the time — some FA Cup finals drew only 40,000 crowds back then — but the public wouldn’t find out for many hours, not until the next morning’s newspapers. In 2025, within seconds of an announcement, the news was everywhere, everyone with a different opinion on the plans. But the similarities between 1910 and now are immediately clear.

“Why should Manchester not have a ground second to none in the land, a place that the club and the people can be proud of?” Davies asked back then. “Here is a great sporting population. The people are only waiting for someone to do it.”

In the end, John Henry’s dreams for 100,000 would be watered down slightly, but the fantastic ground built by Scottish architect Archibald Leitch has endured — with, of course, many modifications — until today.

Last Tuesday’s announcements indicated that a new ambitious project, matching the aims of 115 years ago, will go ahead.

When I’d left Old Trafford to go down for Tuesday’s announcement in London, I did linger for a look at the ground. I’m sure every Red will be doing that on their next visit: take a moment to appreciate this historic place while it’s still there.

That was why the first thing I wanted to know – before I or anyone else got excited by the grand plans – was how that history had been taken into account. So, that was my first question to Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Was this a hard decision?

I’d hoped the answer would be ‘yes’. It was. This should be a hard decision, between two great stadiums: one with the history, another for the future.

“It wasn’t the easiest of decisions,” he said. “Because the history of Manchester United is so important.

“We talked to lots of fans as well; they've obviously got a great sort of attraction and sympathy with that old ground. But, ultimately, I think what we were hearing was that, if this really was a fabulous, iconic new stadium, then they would accept that that was a good decision. So we did try to think about it from the fans’ point of view. That was the conclusion we came up with, that it would be a good way to invest money. And you know, we're not leaving behind the tradition and history of Manchester United. It's the same team that's going to be playing. And it's, you know, it's still got the same soul of Manchester United.”

That was one thing I really wanted to investigate while down there: how could the club’s soul be maintained while moving grounds? There were three parts to that query, I think.

The first and second come from the starting point: the brief given to the architects.

“For us, this is about it being the greatest football stadium in the world but it can only be for Manchester United,” one of the architects told me. “So it’s got to retain that grit and identity and feel.”

That’s vital. When we as fans were surveyed for our thoughts on this issue, we were asked to rank concerns in an order. The building of a ‘soulless bowl’ was one of the options given and one wanted by no one. We’ve been to other grounds and felt that lack of identity. A design could be the greatest in the world, but if you could lift it up, place it somewhere else and stick another club’s badge on it, it’s not right for United. This is a club with a unique history and the stadium should reflect that. The trident design is certainly unique.

The next part of the brief that comforted me was the centrality of atmosphere to the plans.

“The second part of the request was that it had to have a really intense atmosphere,” Ratcliffe explained.

“And that the people in the stadium would be as close to the pitch as we possibly could achieve. So that means you've got relatively steep sides rather than flat sides. And we wanted an intense atmosphere because, at the end of the day, I think that's worth points in the league because the more intimidating it is from the point of view of just seeing this mass of people and the sound, because it's designed acoustically to reverberate, the better that is for the club.”

And thirdly, the answer to retaining identity came in the details. Several of them. For example, the choice to — as things stand — not create a retractable pitch, as done at Tottenham Hotspur and Real Madrid. “This is a football-first stadium,” the architect said. So, the priority is the quality of the pitch.

Or for another example, the degrees of steepness in the stands — 35.2, the maximum in UK regulations. Or in how current stadium landmarks might be used in the new ground. The current halfway line, for example, could be preserved beneath the walkway, and the old tunnel can be moved, too. Or in the concourses, where the architect said the ‘feel’ is helped by the materials used, in our case, brick and steel, to reflect Manchester’s industrial heritage, rather than the glass and concrete you might see at other grounds.

And then there are potential new additions to our identity: making the canal and railways a key part of the matchday experience – United was birthed by a railway company’s workers, after all, and later, much of the Old Trafford crowd was filled by workers from the Ship Canal – and having the trident standing tall above every other building in Manchester, visible even from Liverpool.

Crucially, these are all ideas. This was, one of the architects explained, about “the art of the possible.” They wanted to show what a new United ground could look like. There will still be consultation with fans and local residents and there will be conversations around funding and planning permission. But when those black boxes were lifted, and the designs studied by those in attendance, this was about evoking a feeling, and one unique to Manchester United.

I returned to Old Trafford later in the week and looked up at those red letters. They’ve inspired butterflies since I was a kid coming to my first game. I love this place. But I pictured these new designs, with three enormous towers reaching skyward as a symbol of courage, ambition and boldness, and I thought about Mangnall and Davies in 1910, who made those values central to United as a club. To be in the room 115 years on as plans for a new era of our club were unveiled, with those values in mind, was an immense privilege.

The opinions in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Manchester United Football Club.