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  • Mary Earps: Goalkeeper, brand, icon

    Mary Earps: Goalkeeper, brand, icon

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    If you take a stroll along Sir Matt Busby Way, heading towards Old Trafford, and take a left down Railway Road, Mary Earps is waiting to greet you.

    Not in physical form, obviously, but in her iconic celebratory pose, arms wide and fists clenched, mouth wide open as she roars in joy. Earps is the Nottingham-born Manchester United powerhouse, the Lionesses’ moral compass, and officially the best goalkeeper in the world.

    “Welcome to Manchester”, the mural reads, which is a nod to a time, in 2009, when Manchester City unveiled a billboard of Carlos Tevez’s controversial switch from Old Trafford to the Etihad.

    The artwork was created in August, initially for a commercial shoot to promote the 2023-24 Women’s Super League (WSL) season getting under way. It was then supposed to come down but, such is Earps’ popularity, it remains on the side of the house.

    “We were told it was going to be a small sticker, so we were expecting it to be maybe half the house, but we came back after being away and it was the entire wall,” Sam, the homeowner, says. “We were told we would be paid £150.

    “As I was packing my stuff to leave to make arrangements for my dad, who had recently passed away, they called and offered us £500 if we would keep it up for six months. I just remember saying, ‘Yeah, sure’, as I had other things on my mind.

    “We got back a few weeks later to see that it was much bigger than we thought. There were rumours everywhere that we were being paid £5,000 for it, but that simply isn’t true!”

    Earps’ rise over the past two years has been outstanding: 2022 European Championship winner, 2022 Best FIFA Goalkeeper, 2023 Finalissima winner, 2022 and 2023 Arnold Clark Cup winner, and World Cup runner-up in 2023 (she also won the tournament’s Golden Glove award for keeping the most clean sheets).

    Just last week she was named as a finalist alongside Spain’s Cata Coll and Australia’s Mackenzie Arnold to be named the Best FIFA Goalkeeper for a second year running. Earps is also the favourite to be named the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year.

    But this article is not about her on-field success.

    Earps has become a commercial force in her own right, a social media star, someone who has brands queuing up to work with her — and she has done all of this by remaining her authentic self.

    What started on TikTok as a light-hearted way to shine a light on women’s football has seen her become a cult figure.

    Whether it is taking on Nike — and winning — over its failure to stock women’s goalkeeper shirts, or leaving young supporters in tears as they meet their idol, or successfully launching her own clothing range, Earps’ influence has become undeniable.

    GO DEEPER

    Mary Earps’ Nike comments were fearless – this is why what she said really matters

    “To have a personal brand beyond being an elite athlete, what’s required is a combination of success on the pitch with marketability and appeal off the pitch,” Misha Sher, global head of sport, entertainment and culture at EssenceMediacom, tells The Athletic. “The athlete needs to have broader appeal in popular culture and that’s rare.

    “Mary has got the personality, opinions and she stands up for things that people care about when it comes to equality. That bodes well. She also happens to be the highest-profile goalkeeper in the world’s biggest sport.”

    Since the Lionesses won the Euros in July 2022, Earps’ social media following has gone up — substantially — across the board. On Instagram, over the past three years, it has climbed from 29,000 to over 700,000. Her growth as a presence on TikTok is equally impressive — she has gained more than one million followers since posting her first video in August 2021.


    Mary Earps’ future at Manchester United is uncertain (Charlotte Tattersall – MUFC/Manchester United via Getty Images)

    Her stance against Nike during the Women’s World Cup in Australia was authentic, measured and cut through to a wider audience.

    “If you determine an athlete’s commercial value by their ability to endorse brands, sell products, together with on-pitch performance and their personal brand, demographic appeal and social media, then she is an absolute winner,” Lisa Parfitt, co-founder of sports marketing agency The Space Between, says.

    “The Nike scenario shows she has a real awareness of social issues and uses her platform to advocate for equality.

    “What was most interesting about that for her is that she has shown her influence to sell products. The irony was there wasn’t any product to sell. But Nike has since released goalkeeper jerseys and they sold out not long after being on sale.

    “That is incredibly powerful for any athlete to be able to show the impact and influence they have is able to drive commercial sales.”

    Earps is represented by The Purpose Agency, which is part of the Aim Sky High Talent Group, led by Christina Taylor. Her current long-term brand deals include Swedish drink NOCCO. More are expected to follow in 2024.

    Even though brands are now queuing up to work with the England goalkeeper, there is a conscious decision only to partner with companies that align with her morals and way of thinking.

    “In Mary’s future, you would expect her to be working with brands where she can really see there is an opportunity to do something different or make a difference to a cause she cares about,” Parfitt says. “You are unlikely to see her doing deals for the sake of deals.”

    In June, the 30-year-old launched ‘MAE27’, her own clothing brand, which stocks T-shirts and hoodies with her slogan ‘be unapologetically yourself’ across the front. Prices range from £26.50 to £55 and when the most recent colours were launched, they sold out in three minutes — and that included the website crashing.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    How to turn a Women’s World Cup star into a global brand

    Earps takes a hands-on approach to her range, whether it is being in the shop to feel and choose the material of the T-shirts or turning up with the exact font she wants to use for the slogan.

    Although money entering professional women’s football continues to grow, it is no secret that players tend to earn more from commercial deals than they do playing contracts. Earps was one of the first female players to utilise TikTok, realising there was an opportunity to showcase women’s football as it was not broadcast to the extent it is now.

    Earps’ first post on the social media platform in August 2021 featured her kicking a ball in her Manchester United training kit, asking viewers to guess her position, before changing into a dress with the caption ‘I’m a keeper’. It had over 500,000 views.

    Other videos on her profile have surpassed six million views. What may come as a surprise, especially in an era when professional athletes have agencies managing their social media profile, is that Earps creates all of her own content, even down to idea generation and the editing process.

    “Social media has become a filtered environment and Mary is absolutely unfiltered, and that is what people love about her,” Parfitt adds. “That is what brands are looking for. They want to work with people who are unfiltered and willing to give everything.

    “You have to look at the rawness of what a commercial partnership is. Yes, you want to support each other and have shared values, but ultimately it is about commercial value and selling products.”

    Turning Earps into a commercial powerhouse will not happen overnight, Sher says, pointing to the fact she will have to “build” something over several years.

    “What is Mary Earps doing five years from now? Does she own her own brand? Does she have a production company? Is she a co-founder of a tech business?” Sher asks. “You then start to work out about the types of things you could be doing now that allows that to happen in five years.

    “Creating a powerful personal brand that means something to people is different to launching a logo. Mary has an amazing opportunity to build on her personality, authenticity and relatability, but it needs to have a vision and you have to work towards that vision.”

    For Earps, success on the pitch domestically and internationally is her sole focus. Her contract at United expires next summer and she is yet to sign a new deal. There has been continued speculation that she will join Arsenal, linking up with Alessia Russo, her former United team-mate, who made the switch to north London in July.

    She is a popular member of the dressing room at Carrington and, along with Ella Toone, attracts more media requests than any other player.

    It is relevant to ponder whether being aligned with United, one of the most recognisable football clubs and brands in the world, will help grow her commercial profile. Russo’s transfer to Arsenal suggests it is not the be-all or end-all.

    “Mary’s greatest value is currently as a Lioness,” Parfitt explains. “The Lionesses have cut through to a mass UK and global audience and are associated with success.

    “The England platform is probably more influential for Mary than Manchester United Women at the moment but that’s simply because of the growth trajectory of the domestic game, which is playing catch-up to England at the moment.”

    Earps recently went viral, again, after United’s 4-0 win against Tottenham Hotspur on December 10. A video emerged online of a young girl, Betsy, being embraced by Earps.

    “It is a really beautiful human moment and it was such a natural thing,” Rob Boulton, Betsy’s father, tells The Athletic. “She was so comforting to Betsy, who in that moment became a bit overwhelmed.

    “Mary hung around for about 40 minutes after the game. The only way I can describe it is Beckhamesque. It was incredible to see the aura around her in a really positive way.

    “All of the children went to the barriers and were desperate to get an autograph or photo. Mary was just amazing with all of them. She has a magnetic personality and it is really difficult not to like her. She appeals on two different levels.

    “For the children, they buy into a particular player and she is brilliant from that aspect. From an adult point of view, the argument she had with Nike showed she stands up for what she believes in and her morals are in the right place. I look at her and think she is exactly the type of role model I want for my daughters.”

    From a branding and marketing perspective, the fact Earps has captured the attention of so many young supporters bodes well for the future.

    “In her own words, she is unapologetically herself,” Parfitt says. “And if a brand wants to engage with women and young women, this idea of being yourself and standing for something is what cuts through. Women want to see themselves represented in these people.”

    For Sher, the path Earps should look to follow from a commercial point of view is the same one travelled by Ian Wright, the former Arsenal and England forward.

    “If you look at how Ian has carefully built a powerful personal brand with his authentic personality at its heart, there is so much to admire,” Sher says. “When I look at Mary, she has the chance to do something global, but it is very difficult to do that.

    “Five years from now, I can see Mary doing the types of things Ian is doing because she has got that personality. Ian is everywhere, but only in places where it makes sense for him to be. One day he is filming a documentary, the next day he is launching his own line for Adidas and then he’s on a catwalk at London Fashion Week.

    “There is something about Ian, his personality and how he goes about things that is not dissimilar to the way Mary is.

    “Of course, everyone has their unique traits and circumstances but I do think Mary could learn a lot from the way Ian has navigated his career to leverage all the authenticity of his personality to build a very successful career after retiring.”

    Earps’ focus, for as long as she is playing professional football, will be fixed on changing women’s football for the better and adding to her already impressive trophy haul. The work to turn her ever-growing popularity into a commercially-viable entity is ongoing, and will continue to gather pace behind the scenes.

    “It takes years to craft and reinforce,” Sher says. “If you take a step back, most companies we engage with, be that Nike or Apple, weren’t overnight successes. They first had a vision, a story and were able to craft a narrative and that story has been reinforced in the eyes of consumers for many years.”

    Many athletes lose sight of who they really are on their way to the top. Media advisors train them to be boring, to avoid talking about myriad topics, and turn them into a polished version of who they used to be.

    But Earps is different, and it is no coincidence her popularity has grown due to the nature of her personality. In a world where footballers are encouraged to sit on the fence, she is authentic, no matter the topic.

    “She is at the start of her journey and now there is a recognition she is a powerful brand and there are huge amounts of opportunities for brands to work with her,” Parfitt adds.

    “‘Be unapologetically yourself’ may be a slogan to some, but to Earps it is who she is — and her prowess on the pitch, and as a commercial entity off it, is going to benefit from it.”

    (Top photo: Dan Sheldon/The Athletic)

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    The New York Times

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  • Jesse Lingard is a non-footballing footballer – he won't be the last

    Jesse Lingard is a non-footballing footballer – he won't be the last

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    It’s Jesse Lingard’s birthday. He turns 31 today and, at this stage of his life, he must realise it is not going to be easy shifting some of the perceptions that come from being a non-footballing footballer. For now, at least.

    Speak to Lingard’s former team-mates and they will talk about a guy who has been popular at all his clubs and played at a level, including a World Cup semi-final, that automatically commands respect among his fellow pros.

    But it is also a harsh reality that many others will be wondering how a player with Lingard’s record of achievement has spent so long without a club and seems less troubled by that situation than you might assume.

    Lingard last played competitive football in April, a two-minute substitute appearance for Nottingham Forest against his old club Manchester United. His last 90-minute performances in the Premier League came with Forest in August 2022 and, before that, you have to go back another 15 months to find the previous one, on loan to West Ham from United.

    Since then, it has largely been a period of drift for a player who had previously won 32 England caps and contributed to some of United’s happier moments since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, including scoring the winning goal in the 2016 FA Cup final. There have been some nagging injuries, some personal issues and only sporadic glimpses of his undoubted talent.


    Jesse Lingard celebrates his winner in the 2016 FA Cup final (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

    And, little more than two years since his last England appearance, the life of ‘JLingz’ involves an entirely different routine these days: taking a ball and going outside, alone, other than a personal trainer, to work on his fitness.

    Something similar happened to Michael Owen when he left United at the end of the 2011-12 season and it quickly became apparent that a player who was once football royalty, with all the superstar’s wealth and accessories, may have to re-evaluate his position within the sport.

    Owen, like Lingard, was in his early thirties. His highlights reel was even more extensive, as a former Ballon d’Or winner, but age had also started to become his biggest opponent. And, though neither man is ever going to end up on Skid Row, it cannot be easy trying to adjust when the boundaries shift and the sport, as a whole, stops looking at you so favourably.

    In Owen’s case, he was too old, too expensive and too injury-prone for the elite clubs and there were times over a long and challenging summer when he contemplated abandoning football to devote himself to his horse racing business.

    “I did get a couple of enquiries from overseas — one from Vancouver Whitecaps, a Canada-based MLS side, and one from an Australian side, Newcastle Jets,” Owen wrote in his 2019 autobiography. “When I considered those two possibilities, neither particularly appealed.

    That apart, Stoke City were the only Premier League side who showed any real interest and, if you remember their tactics under Tony Pulis’ management, it always seemed strange to imagine a player with Owen’s size and skill set in their forward line. Owen had doubts himself. But he signed for them anyway because the alternative would have meant his absence from football going beyond six months — which is exactly what is happening with Lingard now.


    Michael Owen and Stoke City, managed by Tony Pulis, were an unhappy marriage (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

    “My God, the whole episode was so empty,” Owen added. “When I first signed for Liverpool, I literally couldn’t write my name quickly enough. The same applied at Real Madrid and, for that matter, Manchester United. I must admit that when I signed (for Stoke), I did so with absolutely no joy. It was just a job and I signed only because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. What else could I do?”

    That seems like a question Lingard must have asked himself many times since he started pitching up at a sports centre in Newton Heath — the area of north Manchester where United were founded — to go through his drills, work up a sweat and then upload the pictures to his social-media channels with snappy phrases such as “keep pushing” or “positivity and progress”.

    “Even the hardest days will eventually pass,” read one recent post. “We only do positive.”

    The intention, presumably, is to show potential employers how hard he is working, how devoted he remains to the sport, whatever anyone might say, and how he is ready for a new challenge. His ambition, it seems, is to find a team in the U.S. “Motivation, hunger and love for the game,” read another recent post.

    Unfortunately for Lingard, the new MLS season does not start until February. Nothing has been fixed up and, over the last six months, the football industry is hard-faced and cynical enough for many people to question his priorities. Why, they want to know, is somebody with his ability out of work? Does he not care? Does this not hurt his professional pride? Because nobody wants to be a non-footballing footballer, surely?

    The questions are understandable because, however it is dressed up, there is nothing orthodox about a footballer spending half a year, or possibly longer, out of the game.

    But there is some context here and, if anything, the nature of modern-day football makes it likely we will see more of this happening in the future.

    Here, we have a man of extraordinary wealth who is in a position where he does not have to rush into what he does next.

    It is not about a shortage of offers, according to people with knowledge of the situation who will remain anonymous to protect their positions, or that Lingard holds any arrogant assumptions about the level he should be playing. It is more about waiting for the deal that suits him best, rather than feeling compelled or pressured to accept whatever comes his way.


    Jesse Lingard started the 2018 World Cup semi-final for England against Croatia (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

    That, after all, is exactly what Owen did with Stoke and look how that turned out. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Owen did not fit into Pulis’ big-man-at-the-far-post methodology, sitting on the bench while Peter Crouch and Jonathan Walters started in attack.

    In a moment of tragicomedy, one training session ended with one of the senior pros holding court in the dressing room and asking with a mix of humour and seriousness: “What the hell is Michael Owen even doing in here?”

    Owen, who was asking himself the same question, retired at the end of the season after making no league starts, but had offered to hand in his notice on at least one occasion during the preceding months.

    Against that kind of backdrop, maybe Lingard is entitled to be picky. It would be a lot harder, perhaps, if the interest had dried up. But the phone is still ringing and, as long as that is the case, the attitude seems to be: why rush?

    Lingard had previously spent several weeks training with Al Ettifaq, the Saudi Pro League club where Steven Gerrard is the manager and the players include Jordan Henderson, Moussa Dembele and Georginio Wijnaldum.

    Before that, Lingard had a similar arrangement at West Ham and even turned out for David Moyes’ team in a behind-closed-doors game against Ipswich. Many people wondered whether it might lead to something more substantial and Lingard having the chance to mend his relationship with the club’s supporters, who were aggrieved by his decision to pick Forest ahead of them a year earlier. But nothing more came of it and all the talk about Saudi Arabia fizzled out, too

    Wolves toyed with the idea of moving for him. Other clubs in the Premier League discussed his availability, along with one from Italy. Nothing, though, has worked out and it is worth remembering that Lingard, despite everything, will not come cheap. Forest were paying a basic weekly salary of £115,000 ($147,000), plus some eye-watering bonuses, which led to some issues between the player’s camp and the club’s owners.


    Jesse Lingard had a disappointing spell at Nottingham Forest (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

    Lingard is not blameless and you have to wonder whether, on reflection, he recognises it was a mistake not to rejoin West Ham last season, especially as it meant him not being part of their Europa Conference League triumph, the club’s first major trophy for 43 years.

    Other offers were proposed by Newcastle United and Fulham, with four-year deals under discussion. Instead, Lingard signed a one-year contract with Forest, where he started only 14 games, rather than accepting the club’s offer of a two-year arrangement.

    Maybe that was an error, too, but he and his advisers thought he would be in a stronger position if he played well for a year, which he did not, and became available on a free transfer.

    With that in mind, it becomes easier to understand why Lingard wants to make sure his next choice is the right one.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Jesse Lingard and Manchester United’s unfortunate farewell

    His penance comes in the form of 24/7 reminders, via the cesspit of social media, that he is a shirker and a waster, that he has thrown his career away and various other charming responses to go with all the hostile headlines and regular unpleasantness that someone in his position has to encounter.

    Some people can get extraordinarily angry when they think a super-rich footballer is not making the most of his talent. It is an everyday part of Lingard’s life and that, perhaps, is the saddest thing given that he has tried to open up in the past about some of his more difficult times at Old Trafford and his occasional struggles with mental health.

    So, yes, perhaps MLS will be the best place for Lingard to rediscover himself and, this being his birthday, maybe we can hold off from judging him too harshly until we see what happens next.

    Has he made some questionable choices? Yes. Does he need to find his way back soon? Absolutely, unless he wants to become one of football’s forgotten men. But he could play for another five or six years, if he really wants to.

    The next few weeks will tell us more. It all comes down to Lingard’s priorities and that is the biggest question when, ultimately, 31 is far too young for any player to be talked about in the past tense.

    (Top photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Why are football stadiums so expensive to build?

    Why are football stadiums so expensive to build?

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    Manchester United and Chelsea share a problem they cannot hope to run away from. Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge might be able to narrate storied chapters of the Premier League’s history, but neither can project a compelling future.

    At least not in their current states. The famous homes of Manchester United and Chelsea have become weights that threaten to hold back their owners. They are not fit for an elite long-term purpose.

    The day the first bulldozers come rumbling over the horizon might not be imminent, but it has become inevitable. There is an acceptance of that reality, even from those with the onerous task of funding it all.

    The Premier League’s landscape will soon be modernising elsewhere, too.

    Plans are afoot for Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace and Manchester City to increase capacities with new or extended stands in the next five years, a road that Liverpool and Fulham are already walking.

    Everton are in the final 12 months of a build that will soon see them call Bramley-Moore Dock their 53,000-capacity home and upsizing is also on the mind of Luton Town and Bournemouth. Newcastle United, too, are considering all options for the future of St James’ Park.

    Stadium improvements are becoming more a necessity than a choice as clubs keep pace with the moves of competitors, but these grand plans are increasingly reliant on huge financial commitments.

    Neither Manchester United nor Chelsea can realistically hope to transform Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge and have change left from £1billion ($1.26b), a figure that is in line with what it cost Tottenham Hotspur to deliver their new home in 2019 and also what was needed to complete a rebuild of Real Madrid’s 85,000-capacity Santiago Bernabeu stadium this year.

    Everton’s stadium should come in well short of that mark, with their project forecast to cost anywhere between £550million and £760million, but that is equal to at least twice the club’s annual turnover.


    Construction work at the Santiago Bernabeu (Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images)

    Not an investment for the faint of heart, nor are any of those being undertaken by Premier League rivals. Fulham’s rebuilt Riverside Stand, housing 8,650 fans when eventually complete, has already cost more than £120million, while Crystal Palace’s new 13,500-capacity Main Stand has been forecast to cost £150million.

    Much has changed from the stadium construction boom around the turn of the century when teams such as Sunderland, Southampton, Leicester City and Derby County could build sizable new homes from scratch for less than £35million. Old Trafford’s North Stand, subsequently renamed after Sir Alex Ferguson, was said to have cost less than £19million when knocked up in the 1990s.

    Even Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, completed in 2006 to great acclaim, cost roughly 40 per cent of what north London rivals Tottenham needed to fund their stadium 13 years later. Brighton & Hove Albion’s slick home, meanwhile, cost less to build in 2011 than they made when selling Moises Caicedo to Chelsea for £100million this summer.

    So why are these modern construction projects so much more expensive?

    Inflation can account for plenty, including the sharp rises in the cost of raw materials and labour, but it is a change in expectation that sees football’s newest structures demanding huge investment.

    “It’s increasingly about how much it’s going to cost and also how much revenue it can make,” says Christopher Lee, a managing director at Populous, the architecture firm with 40 years of experience in designing sports stadiums and arenas across the world, including Wembley and the Lusail Stadium, host of the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar.

    “Historically, it would have been: ‘A club has £100milion, let’s go for it’. Now it’s very much about a return on the investment. If I spend X, how can I return Y?

    “They are huge investments in time and money and there’s the idea now that it should be an amazing experience for supporters. It’s not just about ground capacity or how many bodies you can squeeze in. Now clubs are asking how they can genuinely compete with the high street.”

    The changes driving the rising costs are clear.

    “It’s the level of quality, the level of expectation,” adds Lee. “There’s inflation and, at the moment, there’s a huge peak in construction costs. But the level of aspiration and the level of finish are so different.

    “The level of expectation from a general admission concourse has changed so much. Look at a build like Bolton Wanderers (finished in 1997). It’s concrete floors, breeze block walls, roller shutters from an industrial site and a couple of beer taps. Then you look at Spurs and it’s like any bar you’d find in London.

    “A lot of it is aspiration and also what clubs can create. Spurs want it to be a seven-day-a-week stadium, multi-sport, multi-event where the investment is worth it.”

    No longer are stadiums and stands designed as basic, empty shells just for Saturday afternoons. Now a football club’s home needs to be a driving force for revenue.

    Tottenham, a club without a major trophy in 15 years, are now breathing down the necks of Manchester United as the English club with the greatest matchday turnover thanks, primarily, to the design of their 62,000-capacity stadium. As well as hosting NFL matches and major concerts by using a retractable pitch, the vast stands give fans a reason to arrive for games early and leave late.

    Money made through the turnstiles has more than doubled since Spurs left White Hart Lane in 2017, with the annual gate receipts climbing from £48million to £108million. An off-field advantage given to Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea has now been taken back.

    A new stadium, perhaps the Premier League’s best, has been as transformative for Spurs as Arsenal’s move was for them in 2006. Matchday revenue jumped from £44million in the club’s last season at Highbury to £90.6m when making a new home at the Emirates. A big outlay — reported to be just under £400million in total — but handsome dividends.

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    Chelsea do not hide away from the fact their turn is coming, either at a rebuilt Stamford Bridge or a site nearby. And though Old Trafford’s 74,000 capacity might still give Manchester United a head-start on rivals, the stadium’s diminishing reputation, tight seating and an infamous leaking roof ensure a rebuild must come sooner rather than later.

    Populous’ architects, who were behind both the Emirates and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, were appointed as master planners for the redevelopment of Old Trafford alongside Legends International last year. The plans drawn up are “on hold” as billionaire businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe finalises a deal that will see him take a 25 per cent stake in Manchester United.

    “We’ve done the work with Legends to look at all the feasibility options, multiple different versions of renovations of Old Trafford and also what a new build could potentially look like,” adds Lee. “All of it focused on how we can create an amazing fan experience. Manchester United are very focused on that.”

    As are every club at the drawing board. For all the criticisms it has drawn for its £3,000 season tickets, Fulham’s Riverside Stand will be finished off with a hotel, health club and rooftop pool included to maximise opportunities. Palace’s rebuilt Main Stand, proposed to open in time for the 2026-27 season, is also set to include a museum, as well as an additional 8,000 seats.


    Fulham’s Riverside Stand (Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

    “You can make money on player transfers or commercial deals, but everything else is relatively fixed,” explains Lee. “The one big variable is how much you can make from your stadium. That’s what differentiates you as a business, to be able to go buy better players.

    “The figure we always quote is at the old White Hart Lane where the spend per head was about £1.75. In the new stadium, it’s about £16. So multiply that by 50,000 general admissions and they’re pulling several million a game. It makes a big difference.”

    As Manchester United, Chelsea and Newcastle United are demonstrating, these can never be considered short-term projects. Feasibility studies can take 12 months and, typically, it will take between two and three years before the design and approval process ends with a major contractor appointed. Only then can the construction begin.

    Costs from that point can be shaped by all sorts of factors, including inflation, the scope of groundwork and location. Flexibility is a must, but any club embarking on a major capital project will have loosely considered the eventual price of every seat.

    “There used to be a reasonable assessment on what you could build a stadium for,” says Nick Marshall, co-owner and director at KSS, the London-based architecture firm whose designs include Brighton’s Amex Stadium, Liverpool’s redeveloped Main Stand at Anfield and proposed expansions for Leicester City and Crystal Palace.

    “Around 10 to 15 years ago, the aspirations of the most discerning customer were slightly lower.

    “A watershed moment would probably be Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium when the expectations of the typical stadium visitor or spectator started to increase. It set a new benchmark.

    “At the time, without taking inflation into account, it would cost between £2,500 and £4,000 per seat and everybody thought that was a good benchmark.

    “That’s clearly not the case now. Anybody who’s aspiring to Tottenham levels of corporate hospitality in matchday usage and aspiring to be the best stadium in the world is looking at a cost of at least £10,000 a seat.”

    Tottenham Hotspur Stadium hospitality


    The finishes at Tottenham’s stadium are different to those seen 20 years ago (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

    And the higher you build, the greater the cost. The roof spans on the biggest builds can stretch up to 40 metres. Severfield, the Yorkshire-based steel company, has supplied 12,200 tonnes of structural steelwork that now forms the bones of Everton’s new stadium. Trusses used in the north and south stands measure 170 meters alone.

    The cost of steel and concrete, in particular, has fluctuated dramatically in recent times. Steel is roughly 50 per cent more expensive than it was 10 years ago and another factor in the climbing costs.

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    “Certain materials have disproportionately risen because of availability and market pressures,” explains Marshall. “Historically, big countries were buying up steel and concrete and most of the concrete we pour has a big proportion of steel in it. So if steel goes up, the cost of concrete goes up because you’re producing reinforced slabs.

    “The things you use most in the stadium are concrete and steel — if those go up in price, the cost of a stadium is increasing.

    “Some of those costs have stabilised recently. There was limited availability of things like glass and aluminium, which are still a little bit on the expensive side. Typically, material costs have caused the price rises but that has been across the board.

    “They disproportionately affect a stadium because of the amount that some of them use. Imagine trying to buy 600 or 700 tonnes of steel for a big roof. A small increase in the cost of a tonne of steel is spread very rapidly over a very large area. They can be affected by fluctuations in the market quite dramatically.”

    A quarter of the budget will typically be spent on structural engineering work, but it is what can be found within that sets the modern stadiums apart.

    There is an expectation on the level of finish, from hospitality lounges down to concourses. The technology and mechanical and electrical (M&E) systems can account for as much as a third of building costs. Piping, wiring, lighting, ventilation… all the things that were given minimal consideration a generation ago. There are also industry-driven upgrades to toilets, kiosks, turnstile software and disabled facilities.

    “Services are quite high and there are big kitchens doing very large matchday preparation and they usually work for the week preceding the match,” adds Marshall.

    “There is demand on the stadium pre-game from all the M&E kit. That is probably slightly disproportionate to what it would be in any other type of building other than, for example, hospitals or laboratories.

    “The structures, M&E and foundations and all of the live safety systems are quite onerous in stadiums. Put all of that together and it’s about 60 to 70 per cent of it tied up in the things standing up and working before you put glazing on the front like the facade.”

    A financial director will likely be sweating by this point. And that is before consideration is given to borrowing the money to make it all possible. A newly built stand or stadium will cost one figure, but the interest paid on debts to fund it can cause the expenditure to spiral upward.

    The days when Tottenham could refinance its £637million stadium debt at 2.6 per cent are unlikely to return any time soon. Not when the Bank of England’s rate stands unmoved at 5.25 per cent, its highest mark since the 2008 financial crisis. There have certainly been better times to fund a major capital project.


    Construction cranes above Liverpool’s Anfield Road End (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

    The precise numbers behind these projects will never be known, but there is no denying where the most expensive stadium builds are still consistently found. Bigger has been better in the United States, with costs regularly soaring beyond the $1billion mark.

    None have been more ambitious — or expensive — than the SoFi Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers NFL teams. That reportedly cost $5.5billion when completed in 2020 and, with a 70,000 capacity, hosted the Super Bowl in 2022.


    SoFi Stadium in LA (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

    Then there is the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, the MetLife Stadium, which houses the New York Jets and the New York Giants, and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. All were enormous investments north of $1billion — but with an embedded commercial strategy.

    “The U.S. has had a huge impact,” explains Lee of Populous, which includes Yankee Stadium in New York among its portfolio of projects.

    “There’s sniffiness, but thinking about your fans as customers when you’re designing and operating a stadium is probably the biggest change.

    “We’ve been very guilty of thinking fans will be there for life coming through the turnstiles and drinking the same crap beer.

    go-deeper

    “In America, it’s a different dynamic because professional sport offers more choice. A franchise can up and move from one side of the country to another, so there’s a level of fickleness and a need to attract a customer. A stadium has to respond to that. They’ve been driven down a route of creating the best possible experience for people coming to the stadium.

    “Tottenham could never turn Arsenal fans, but their competition is now the high street. That’s what they’re up against.”

    And that ultimately leads Manchester United and Chelsea back to the projects they will eventually have to sanction before their homes become handicaps.

    go-deeper

    Stadiums remain the focal point of any club, the places that will bring thousands to its doors in all weathers. But they now need to be more, a platform for growth and expansion. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus have all grasped the nettle, no matter the outlays needed.

    “It’s not just about creating some bowl that’s cladded in something shiny anymore,” says Lee. “Those mid-1990s stadiums, a lot of them could be anywhere in the world. You’d have no idea.

    “That’s an evolution of these buildings. They’ve gone from an industrial, civic approach to a cultural one.

    “They’re buildings that have genuine relevance to their communities. Stadiums are like town halls, the hearts of communities. A club wants to create amazing experiences but revenue is increasingly important in the modern game.”

    Additional reporting: Matt Woosnam

    (Top photos: Getty Images)

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  • Everton 0 Manchester United 3: Garnacho’s stunning goal, Mainoo and protests

    Everton 0 Manchester United 3: Garnacho’s stunning goal, Mainoo and protests

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    Alejandro Garnacho’s stunning overhead kick helped Manchester United maintain their status as the Premier League’s form team with victory over Everton at a feisty Goodison Park.

    Everton supporters staged protests against the club’s 10-point deduction before and during the game, holding up posters saying “corrupt” before kick off and in the 10th minute.

    After being stunned by Garnacho’s acrobatic opener, Everton carried the greater attacking threat but went 2-0 down when Ashley Young fouled Anthony Martial in the box (VAR Chris Kavanagh prompted referee John Brooks to review his decision to book the United striker for a dive) and Marcus Rashford (not Bruno Fernandes) converted the penalty.

    Martial scored his ninth goal against Everton for United’s third in the game to ensure a first Premier League win of the season by more than a single goal. They have now won five out of their last six games, the 15 points gained being more than any other side during this period.

    Everton, meanwhile, are second-bottom on four points.

    Here The Athletic’s Laurie Whitwell and Sebastian Stafford-Bloor analyse the match.

    Was Garnacho’s overhead kick the best the Premier League has seen?

    Sitting high in the Goodison Park commentary booth, Gary Neville knew he was sparking debate by hailing Garnacho’s acrobatic strike as the best of its kind he had seen. Even better than Wayne Rooney’s, he insisted. That Rooney goal needs no further description for people to know the moment in question — a sign of its unique quality. But instinctively it feels like Garnacho’s will gain the same cachet.

    In terms of technique, both are similar, with the player shuffling backwards and flipping their body on an angle to connect with the ball, but Garnacho’s was a cleaner hit, with Rooney’s famously coming off his shin. There was a bit of this with Garnacho’s, but some boot, too. Garnacho also had less time to react, with Diogo Dalot’s cross fired quicker than Nani’s, which took a deflection.

    Perhaps this is a separate argument but the build-up arguably gives Garnacho’s extra edge too. Victor Lindelof’s pass to Marcus Rashford to start the move was sublime.


    Garnacho’s wonderful overhead kick (Getty Images)

    Rooney’s had greater context, winning a Manchester derby in a season United went on to lift the Premier League title. But Garnacho’s was important too — quelling the hyped Everton start in a game Erik ten Hag’s side needed to win to stay close to the Champions League places.

    Ten Hag got a good view of the goal, serving his touchline ban by watching from the directors’ box in between technical director Darren Fletcher, who played in that Rooney game in 2011, and new interim chief executive Patrick Stewart.

    As for all the other contenders for best overhead kick the Premier League has seen, Sebastien Haller’s (vs Crystal Palace) in 2020, Dimitar Berbatov’s (vs Liverpool) in 2010, Christian Benteke’s (vs Manchester United) in 2015, Andy Carroll’s (vs Palace) in 2017, Emre Can’s (vs Watford) in 2017 are all worthy of mention. But Garnacho’s had a special blend of power, distance and speed.

    Laurie Whitwell

    How did Mainoo do on his first Premier League start?

    Had pre-season gone differently, Kobbie Mainoo would have started a Premier League game before now. He started against Arsenal in New Jersey and was excellent, then again for the friendly against Real Madrid in Houston in a sign of how highly Ten Hag regards the 18-year-old. But a knee injury sustained in that game in July kept Mainoo out until recently.

    Selecting Mainoo in feverish Goodison Park was a statement by Ten Hag of the midfielder’s qualities and his composure stood out starkly. As a schoolboy, Mainoo was a star of the United team who won the FA Youth Cup in 2022, but this was another level. Despite the hectic nature of the contest he was never rushed, even when receiving the ball in deep positions from Andre Onana. He looked to turn and play forwards too, rather than pass back.

    He sensed danger wisely, sliding in to scoop away a certain goal from Idrissa Gana Gueye when Dwight McNeill’s shot rolled towards the line, and flying to block a shot by McNeill a short time later as Everton ramped up the pressure.

    Mainoo was effective higher up too, at one stage picking up the ball from Dalot in a pocket of space and getting into the box after an exchange of passes with Marcus Rashford.

    When Mainoo was substituted on 72 minutes, he received congratulations from Harry Maguire and Scott McTominay, and Ten Hag will hope he now has a mobile player for that No 6 position.


    Mainoo clears the ball off the line (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    Laurie Whitwell

    How did Everton respond on the pitch to their 10-point penalty?

    The tone of Everton’s response was as everyone knew it would be. The crowd was furious and partisan. Placards decrying the Premier League’s decision decorated the stands and fireworks crackled in the skies above Goodison Park. The tenor of the day turned this into a football match played inside a protest.

    On the pitch, the players were animated too. Garnacho’s fabulous goal may have been good enough to drain the oxygen from the day but Everton quickly rebuilt in the aftermath — to the extent that United spent the rest of the half barely clinging to their lead. They failed to move, or even retain, possession in any meaningful way during the first half, resorting to long, direct exits which invited Everton back towards them.


    Referee Brooks checks the VAR screen (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

    And that should have been costly. There was heart to Everton’s football, but imagination too, and they created enough chances to at least be level at the interval, perhaps even ahead. The VAR review that led to Manchester United’s penalty dimmed some of the belief among Sean Dyche’s players in the second half, understandably so, but Goodison continued to boil and bubble long after the points were lost.

    Sebastian Stafford-Bloor

    What did Ten Hag, Dyche and Garnacho say?

    Erik ten Hag: “The start of the game, very good. A very good team goal, the finish was incredible — world class. Probably already the goal of the season. Magnificent moment.

    “Then we went passive and Everton were in the game. At half-time we corrected it and were very good. We were proactive, taking the initiative and scoring great goals.”

    Garnacho, who was named the player of the match by Sky Sports, said: “I can’t believe it to be honest. I didn’t see how it went in. I just listened around. I said, ‘Oh my God.’ For me, (it is) one of the best goals I have ever scored. Yes, probably (one of the goals of the season) but is only November.”

    Sean Dyche: “They started the game with a worldie which put us on the back foot. We played well in the first half and had good chances so I was pleased at half-time.

    “Then they get a penalty early on and the VAR is being made so complex. I feel for the fans and the referee stares at the screen and we know the outcome.

    “The way the modern game is they say it is a penalty. But we see it all the time and it is what the game has become now.”

    What next for Everton?

    Saturday, December 2: Nottingham Forest (A), Premier League 5.30pm GMT, 12.30pm ET

    What next for Manchester United?

    Wednesday, November 29: Galatasaray (A), Champions League, 5.45pm GMT, 12.45pm ET

    United travel to Turkey desperate for three points to get their Champions League campaign back on track. Defeat could see them eliminated from the competition.

    Saturday, December 2: Newcastle (A), Premier League, 8pm GMT, 3pm ET

    Recommended reading

    (Top photo: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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  • Every Premier League club’s stadium plans – from new stands to ground moves

    Every Premier League club’s stadium plans – from new stands to ground moves

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    As the Premier League gets bigger and bigger, so – it seems – do the stadiums that play host to it.

    The vast majority of clubs in the top flight have either drawn up plans to expand their grounds to service the overwhelming demand or are poised to open gleaming new stands – or, in some cases, open new stadiums altogether.

    Here, our experts guide you through what each club has done to their home ground and what could come next, plus how we rated each stadium in our rankings published last month.

    Arsenal: Emirates Stadium

    Current capacity: 60,704

    What The Athletic said: “The Emirates has its critics, but it now delivers the atmosphere, facilities, accessibility and product any sports fan would expect from the Premier League.”

    The Athletic ranking: 4th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Arsenal have not redeveloped Emirates Stadium in regards to size since moving from Highbury in 2006.

    The most recent work done was the revamped artwork around the outside of the stadium in January 2023. The decision to redecorate was made a year earlier and was brought to life by consulting with fans before artists and specialists, such as Reuben Dangoor, Jeremy Deller and David Rudnick, were commissioned to make the artwork.

    Eight panels were created in total to display the club’s international, local and historic impact across men’s, women’s and academy football.

    What comes next? As things stand, no redevelopment work is planned. Alongside the new stadium artwork rolled out earlier this year, Arsenal unveiled a statue of former manager Arsene Wenger outside the Emirates.

    The Frenchman, who managed the club for 22 years and won three league titles, visited the stadium ahead of the new season to see the work.

    The Emirates has the fifth largest capacity in the Premier League, with three of the four larger stadiums (Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London Stadium and Anfield) either built or redeveloped after that date.

    Current capacity: 42,530

    What The Athletic said: “A packed-out Villa Park is a special place to be. When it gets going, there is no place quite like it.”

    The Athletic ranking: 7th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Villa Park last underwent major redevelopment in the 2000-01 campaign, building a bigger Trinity Road Stand, which was built from scratch. There has been an appetite for further expansion since, with the club now closer to the desired redevelopment than they have been in over two decades.

    What comes next? So this is the tricky part. The intention is to increase the capacity by 8,000, expanding Villa Park to 50,000 by 2027, the season before Euro 2028, for which it is a host stadium. This involves knocking down the North Stand completely before wrapping it into the connecting Trinity Road Stand.


    Villa Park could be expanded for Euro 2028 (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    However, progress has been slow and new, revised plans are expected to be released before the end of the year. Inflation has taken hold since initial plans were drawn up and other problems, such as the lack of transport and on-site parking around Villa Park, require further feasibility studies, as do changes to the proposed work outside of Villa Park, such as a ‘Box Park’-type area named ‘Villa Live’.

    A stadium rebuild is likely to need an agreement with Birmingham City Council and Mayor Andy Street over talks about the redevelopment of the local train station, Witton. It will cost the council around £30million and is critical in easing the footfall around the stadium and meeting UEFA guidelines of having between 60-80 per cent of supporters attending the European Championship arriving on public transport.

    There has been no agreement yet and, under time constraints at risk of not adhering to UEFA guidelines, there is a pressing need for plans to be finalised. But there are question marks as to whether the council will spend the money on the station when its budget is already stretched. 

    Jacob Tanswell

    Current capacity: 11,307

    What The Athletic said: “There’s little discernible character. The support is welcoming, but everything feels a bit temporary.”

    The Athletic ranking: 20th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Despite cosmetic touches to the stadium since Bill Foley’s arrival as owner, Bournemouth’s previous redevelopment was done in 2013, two years before the club were promoted to the Premier League for the first time, with the Ted MacDougall Stand being unveiled by the man himself. Incredibly, Real Madrid took part in an exhibition match to mark the occasion.

    What comes next? With Foley keen to increase revenue streams and drive the commercial value of the club, Bournemouth are assessing whether to redevelop the Vitality Stadium or build a new ground. Presently, they are looking at plans, using data, ticketing information and feasibility studies, to scope the right side for a stadium which would increase the capacity. Previously, Foley has outlined his desire for a 20,000-seater stadium.

    The immediate priority is building a new training ground at Canford Magna, moving away from the temporary training pavilion adjacent to Vitality Stadium. A 3G pitch has been installed and once the complex is in operation, players will move there, with the pavilion to be used for office staff, possibly freeing up space inside the stadium for hospitality renovation. In that period, Bournemouth could look to press ahead with plans on what next to do with the current stadium.

    Jacob Tanswell

    Brentford: Gtech Community Stadium

    Current capacity: 17,250

    What The Athletic said: “It is one of the smallest grounds in the top two divisions, but none of that detracts from its charm.”

    The Athletic ranking: 8th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Brentford only moved from Griffin Park to their new ground in September 2020. There have been a few minor cosmetic changes, with a new poster installed on the side, but the biggest work has been to install safe standing.

    Barriers were installed on 1,700 seats in the West Stand and were tested at matches during the Women’s European Championship last year before being fully rolled out for the 2022-23 season.

    What comes next? The Gtech Community Stadium is built on a tight triangular piece of land, which is sandwiched between multiple railway lines and blocks of flats. Even if Brentford wanted to increase the capacity in the future, the tight restrictions make it impossible. For now, they are more than happy in their shiny new home, which chief executive Jon Varney calls “small but perfectly formed”.

    Jay Harris


    The Gtech Community Stadium is tightly hemmed in (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

    Brighton & Hove Albion: Amex Stadium

    Current capacity: 31,876

    What The Athletic said: “Neat, well-equipped and fit for purpose, it symbolises the spirit of the club and its supporters.”

    The Athletic ranking: 16th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? A tunnel club opened at the start of the season, joining similar facilities at Manchester City and Tottenham.

    For a total cost of just under £30,000 for a minimum of three years, members see the players in the tunnel through one-way glass in a fine dining restaurant before watching matches in luxury heated seats above the tunnel in the three-tier west stand.

    What comes next? There are no plans for further major works inside the Amex, which opened in 2011. The capacity increased from 22,500 to close to the current figure a year later, with the addition of the upper tier to the two-tier east stand.

    A major facelift is in the pipeline on the walkway surrounding the stadium, with plans submitted to Brighton & Hove Council for a covered fan zone, which will be available on non-match days for sports screenings, music gigs and other leisure events. The project is expected to open next season.

    Meanwhile, Brighton are pressing ahead with plans to build a second stadium in the city, designed specifically for women’s football.

    Andy Naylor

    Burnley: Turf Moor

    Current capacity: 21,744

    What The Athletic said: “Burnley is a proper football town and it feels like it. But while all places get cold, it can feel particularly chilly.”

    The Athletic ranking: 17th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? The last addition to the stadium was the two corner stands, either side of the Jimmy McIlroy Stand, built to improve disability facilities and stadium accessibility. They were opened in 2019.

    Since ALK Capital’s arrival, improving the experience at Turf Moor has been a key priority. They have added LED electronic signs inside and around the ground and revamped and upgraded the club’s hospitality areas around the ground.

    What comes next? There appear to be no imminent plans for any radical changes at Turf Moor. The ground’s position, so close to a road and neighbouring Burnley Cricket Club’s ground, makes any extension a challenge and is arguably not required anyway.

    The ownership group remains committed to continuing to make minor improvements and upgrades to the stadium as and when required, as what they inherited needed modernising.

    The club did recently commit to implementing safe standing in an area of the ground, as they aim to find ways to improve Turf Moor’s atmosphere. Those plans are still in the early stages.

    Andy Jones

    Chelsea: Stamford Bridge

    Current capacity: 40,173

    What The Athletic said: “As each year goes by, the ground shows more signs of age, but there is no other place Chelsea fans would rather be.”

    The Athletic ranking: 9th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? The last significant change made was the building of a new West Stand, which opened in 2001. It seats 13,500 and is also where VIP boxes, function halls and suites are housed.

    Since Chelsea were bought by the Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium in 2022, some minor changes, mainly decorative, have been made to try to improve the fan experience.

    What comes next? This is a question still to be answered. The Athletic cover the current situation in a lot more depth here and it is certainly complex.

    Chelsea’s ground now ranks as only the 10th biggest club venue in England. From the moment the takeover was completed, figuring out whether to rebuild or move elsewhere has been a priority.

    They spent in the region of £70m-£80m to purchase 1.2 acres of land next to Stamford Bridge from Sir Oswald Stoll Mansions, but have yet to commit to building a new ground on site.

    Redeveloping Stamford Bridge will mean playing at another venue for up to five years while work is carried out. Building somewhere else is an option and going to where the former Earls Court Exhibition Centre used to be is being considered.

    But last week, the company in charge of overseeing the redevelopment of the 40-acre site – Earls Court Development Company – denied that a new ground was part of their plans.

    Simon Johnson

    Crystal Palace: Selhurst Park

    Current capacity: 25,486

    What The Athletic said: “The ground’s soul is among the best in the country. There is a community warmth that can be hard to find at other London clubs.”

    The Athletic ranking: 18th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Selhurst Park has not undergone major work for decades. Minor improvements have been undertaken since promotion to the Premier League in 2013 and the Main Stand had an internal refit, but there have been no substantial changes since the Holmesdale Road End was converted from terracing in 1994, while a TV gantry required upon promotion has significantly obstructed the view from the back of the Arthur Wait stand, a point not lost on visiting fans.

    What comes next? The start of building work on a new 13,500-capacity Main Stand stand and improving other areas of the ground that celebrates its 100th anniversary next year has moved significantly closer after the relocation of nearby residents was completed.

    The expectation is that work will commence at the end of the season and potentially open in time for the start of the 2026-27 season, but costs have already ballooned to around £150million. It is expected to be funded through a capital call of the club’s shareholders.

    Matt Woosnam


    The original vision of a redeveloped Selhurst Park (Crystal Palace FC)

    Everton: Goodison Park

    Current capacity: 39,414

    What The Athletic said: “The Old Lady may be a pensioner, but it is a venerable old dear, bursting with history.”

    The Athletic ranking: 14th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Improvements are made to Goodison on a fairly regular basis, although the last stand to undergo a major redevelopment was the Park End in 1994. The main focus for Everton has been developing the new site at Bramley-Moore Dock.

    What comes next? Everton maintain that the new stadium project is both on time and on budget, with work scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024.

    A move-in date for the stadium – which has been selected as one of the host venues for Euro 2028 – has yet to be finalised, but the club is liaising with supporters on various options, including a potential opening at the start of the 2025-26 season.

    Fans are still waiting to hear how the remainder of the project, which is expected to cost around £760million including ancillary works, will be funded, although Miami-based 777 Partners has committed to ensuring its completion as part of their takeover agreement with Farhad Moshiri. Last week’s Premier League points deduction for breaking profit and sustainability rules is not expected to affect the stadium plans.

    Patrick Boyland

    Fulham: Craven Cottage

    Current capacity: 24,500

    What The Athletic said: “The walk to Craven Cottage sets it apart. There is no football stadium like it.”

    The Athletic ranking: 15th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? The last major work undertaken at Craven Cottage was in the early 2000s when the ground was transformed into an all-seater arena in the aftermath of their top-flight promotion in 2001. Since then, there have been cosmetic changes around the ground, with small capacity increases. The most recent saw the dressing rooms expanded inside the Cottage in 2022 to accommodate the extra substitutes required in the Premier League.

    What comes next? The redevelopment of the Riverside Stand has been years in the making. It was first mooted before Mohamed Al Fayed sold the club in 2013, but it has now been realised under Shahid Khan. The aim is to bring year-round revenue streams into Fulham through a four-star hotel, a members club, a health club and restaurants, bars and other amenities.

    Work began in 2019 and it was originally expected to open in 2021. However, due to a range of issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the complexity of building on the river itself, the full re-opening has been pushed back three times. As it stands, the project is in the fit-out stage, with only 4,968 spectator seats available. Hospitality areas will open next year, with additional seating ahead of the 2024-25 season. The hotel and private members club may not open until 2025.

    Once completed, the new stand will increase Craven Cottage’s capacity to 29,600. It has proven expensive for Khan, with costs over £130million. It is hoped the facilities will ensure Fulham can be run sustainably at the highest level, as well as providing a new walkway along the River Thames. In the long term, Fulham also intend to build a pier on the river. However, this remains in the pre-planning stages.

    Peter Rutzler


    Fulham’s Riverside Stand (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)

    Current capacity: 54,074

    What The Athletic said: “You’ll Never Walk Alone before kick-off is one of football’s special experiences. Anfield can take you on a wild ride you may not want to end.”

    The Athletic ranking: 5th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? The last major development at Anfield was the redevelopment of the Main Stand, which was completed in 2016. The £100million project added a further 8,500 seats to Anfield, increasing the capacity to 54,000.

    What comes next? Liverpool are in the process of completing the £80million redevelopment of the Anfield Road stand, which has been hit by delays since work began in September 2021 and will not be fully open until 2024.

    The new stand will add 7,000 seats to Anfield and increase the capacity to 61,000. Initial plans were to have the stand ready for the start of the 2023-24 season, but the club announced in July that only the lower tier would be open for the first home game of the season against Bournemouth as work continued on the upper tier.

    The aim was to have the upper tier open following the September international break. However, Buckingham Group, who were chosen to oversee the construction, entered administration in early September. Work on the stand stopped for a period. It caused Liverpool to delay the timeframe again from October 2023 to an unspecified date in 2024.

    With tickets already sold for the upper tier, the club had to ask fans with tickets elsewhere in the ground to return them to the club if they were not planning on attending.

    The process to find a new contractor was extensive, with Preston-based Rayner Rowen installed and the site is now fully functional again. The next steps are ongoing as work towards completion continues, although the stand is not set to be fully open until well into 2024, according to multiple people contacted by The Athletic. It is a significant financial blow, with Liverpool missing out on extra revenue of approximately £750,000 per match with capacity down 11,000.

    Andy Jones

    Luton Town: Kenilworth Road

    Current capacity: 11,050

    What The Athletic said: “You won’t hear an atmosphere like it. The walk into the away end through neighbouring terraced housing really is fun, too.”

    The Athletic ranking: 19th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Luton Town spent around £10million to upgrade Kenilworth Road ahead of the 2023-23 season to bring it up to Premier League standards and requirements. The upgrades increased the stadium’s capacity from 10,356 – which would have made it the lowest-ever capacity in the Premier League.

    The main body of renovations centred on renewing the Bobbers Stand, which houses a television gantry as well as seats for fans. The first Premier League home game against Burnley had to be postponed as works were completed.

    What comes next? Power Court Stadium. Luton are saying goodbye to their home since 1905 and are hoping to commence works on a new site in the city centre next to Luton railway station, which will have an initial capacity of 19,500. A second phase of development could see 4,000 seats added.

    “The next phase now is an engagement with Luton Council and key stakeholders, such as the Environment Agency and Historic England, as we take them all through our detailed design process,” chief operating officer Michael Moran said in May 2023. “We are also engaging with contractors as we finalise certain construction features, but our target for completion is 2026, regardless of the club’s league position.”

    Manchester City: Etihad Stadium

    Current capacity: 53,400

    What The Athletic said: “It is akin to visiting a football theme park, but it may never have that final piece of intangible soul that Maine Road had.”

    The Athletic ranking: 11th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? City unveiled their new-look South Stand in a game against Chelsea in August 2015, an occasion also remembered for Eliaquim Mangala’s fine debut. The expansion added 6,250 seats to a new third tier, another 1,500 seats around the pitch and extra hospitality areas.

    What comes next? An even more ambitious expansion that will add 5,000 seats to the North Stand is now full steam ahead. According to the club’s website, the plans include a “larger, single upper tier above the existing lower tier”, which will increase the Etihad’s capacity to over 60,000.

    There will also be a covered fan area with capacity for 3,000 people as well as a new club shop, museum, office spaces and a 400-bed hotel. The hotel, which is scheduled to open in 2026, will also serve the new 23,500-capacity Co-op Live music arena, which opens close to the stadium in May.

    Building on the north stand is scheduled for completion in August 2025.

    Sam Lee


    Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium is set to expand (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    Current capacity: 74,031

    What The Athletic said: “Parts look out of date and the roof is leaking, but the scale of the place is mighty and it comes with a special atmosphere.”

    The Athletic ranking: 3rd

    When was the last redevelopment work done? United have invested millions of pounds in small improvements in recent years, mainly on hospitality areas, disabled facilities and adding safe-standing areas. A paint job was completed in 2022 and quickly gave it a much smarter appearance. At Erik ten Hag’s request, the club built a new lounge for the club’s manager and his players to use before matches at Old Trafford from the beginning of this season, replacing a hospitality area in the Sir Bobby Charlton stand.

    What comes next? United announced in April last year that they had appointed architects Populous and management firm Legends International as master planners and consultants for a revamp of Old Trafford. Several different options were assessed, including increasing Old Trafford’s capacity, building a completely new stadium next to the current one, and development centred around a new main stand.

    These were presented at a fans’ advisory board meeting. Major redevelopment work, however, has remained at a standstill during United’s strategic review, which started last November. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the British billionaire and owner of petrochemicals company INEOS, is set to purchase a 25 per cent stake in United from the Glazer family.

    The Athletic detailed how Ratcliffe is prepared to commit $300million (£245m) of his personal wealth for infrastructure upgrades at Manchester United.

    Dan Sheldon

    Current capacity: 52,257

    What The Athletic said: “It’s slap-bang in the middle of the city, looming over it, setting the mood and drawing people towards it.”

    The Athletic ranking: 2nd

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Aside from changes to corporate boxes, the last proper redevelopment was in 2005. Shearer’s Bar was added to the Gallowgate End, which was itself upgraded as part of an expansion throughout the 1990s, raising capacity to present levels. The Milburn Stand and Leazes End were expanded after the Gallowgate, while corporate boxes were moved from the East Stand elsewhere.

    What comes next? The next phase of redevelopment will not alter the stadium itself, rather the area on Strawberry Place behind the Gallowgate. Mike Ashley sold the lease on that land, but the current owners bought it back and a fan zone, featuring bars, restaurants and big screens, is being built and is due to open within months.


    An artist’s impression of Newcastle’s fan zone (Courtesy of Newcastle United)

    Planning permission has been granted for three years on that site but, beyond, Newcastle are exploring how to raise the capacity to 60,000-65,000. That would likely involve expansion of the Gallowgate End and East Stand, but road and Metro infrastructure, as well as listed buildings on Leazes Terrace behind the latter, make increasing capacity difficult and expensive. It will cost tens of millions and is very much a long-term aspiration rather than a confirmed plan.

    However, the owners insist they want to remain at Newcastle’s historic St James’ home rather than move to a ground outside the heart of the city centre.

    Nottingham Forest: City Ground

    Current capacity: 30,404

    What The Athletic said: “It’s in a beautiful spot at the heart of Nottingham and the home atmosphere has been rejuvenated in recent seasons.”

    The Athletic ranking: 12th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? The club undertook a cosmetic revamp of many areas of the City Ground over the summer.

    That included a refurbishment of the dressing rooms and tunnel area and the construction of an entirely new media suite, in the area where Brian Clough’s office used to be.

    What comes next? In the short term, there is a desire among the Forest hierarchy to get the capacity further above the 30,000 mark and there are early plans to use shipping containers to add roughly 500 extra seats.

    The idea is inspired by one of the venues used during the Qatar World Cup, Stadium 974, which was built entirely out of shipping containers.

    There are also plans in place to further improve the fan experience around the stadium.

    In the longer term, Forest announced plans in February 2019 to knock down the Peter Taylor Stand and rebuild it with Champions League-standard facilities, which would take the capacity up to 35,000.

    The club hope that the appointment of Tom Cartledge, a lifelong Forest fan, as chairman will help accelerate the progress of those plans. Cartledge is chief executive of Handley House Group, which includes Benoy, the firm of architects who designed the proposed development.

    Paul Taylor

    Current capacity: 32,050

    What The Athletic said: “There can be few more intimidating atmospheres in English football. The noise lingers and swells as if stuck under the roof.”

    The Athletic ranking: 13th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? A general brush-up took place last summer, including a new lick of paint to smarten up the back of the South Stand. But the last tangible upgrade came in 2009 when the gap between the South Stand and the Bramall Lane Stand (where away fans are situated) was finally filled in via a new corner stand that included a hotel.

    What comes next? There has been previous talk by the current owners of improving the Kop stand by removing the pillars that currently restrict the view from hundreds of seats. But United’s struggle to compete financially with the rest of the Premier League, even with the riches that accompany promotion, suggests these plans will be firmly on the back-burner until a change of ownership.

    Richard Sutcliffe

    Tottenham Hotspur: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

    Current capacity: 62,850

    What The Athletic said: “Sit inside the stadium and you soon realise its draw: an experience comparable to any live sport stadium across the world.”

    The Athletic ranking: 1st

    When was the last redevelopment work done? There have been no major development works since the stadium opened four years ago. There have been ongoing small improvements and the player’s lounge was refurbished at a not-inconsiderable cost in the summer of 2019.

    What comes next? Spurs are always looking to improve the stadium, but it’s so young and remains the best in class in the Premier League, so there are no big plans in place for redevelopment work.

    Charlie Eccleshare


    The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has become a regular NFL venue (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

    Current capacity: 62,500

    What The Athletic said: “It has the feel of a big, international venue, but the pitch feels distant and so does everyone else in the stadium.”

    The Athletic ranking: 10th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? Ahead of the 2022-23 season, capacity at the London Stadium increased from 60,000 to 62,500 following redevelopment work in the West Stand. In April 2019, the club installed a claret carpet to surround the outside of the playing field.

    What comes next? As it stands, there are no plans for redevelopment work at the London Stadium.

    Roshane Thomas

    Current capacity: 31,750

    What The Athletic said: “A perfect balance of modern facilities and an authentic atmosphere to rival anywhere in the country.”

    The Athletic ranking: 6th

    When was the last redevelopment work done? The modern two-tier Stan Cullis Stand (still known locally as the North Bank) was opened in 2012, taking Molineux to its current capacity. That was the first significant rebuild since 1993, when the Jack Harris Stand (now the Sir Jack Hayward Stand) was opened, replacing the final section of old Molineux terracing.


    How Wolves’ redeveloped stadium could look (Courtesy of Wolverhampton Wanderers)

    What comes next? Wolves have an idea of what comes next, but there is currently no clear picture of when. In 2019, Wolves owners Fosun announced their intention to increase capacity to 50,000 by replacing the Steve Bull and Sir Jack Hayward Stands in the image of the Stand Cullis Stand and filling in the ground’s open corners.

    But Covid-19 and other factors meant the plans were put on hold, where they remain. Wolves have researched a range of options, but there remains no clear timescale.

    Steve Madeley

    (Top photos: Clive Brunskill/Naomi Baker/Catherine Ivill/Getty Images; design: Samuel Richardson)

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  • Bad language, worse jokes and riot police: What really happens in the tunnel

    Bad language, worse jokes and riot police: What really happens in the tunnel

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    “I’ll see you in the tunnel.”

    There was a time when that was more than a throwaway line on the pitch, even if some players found a way to make sure that they never showed up.

    “One of my standard challenges was to (jump and) head the ball and put my studs down someone’s back — which you’d get sent off for now,” Liam Ridgewell, the former Aston Villa, Birmingham City, West Bromwich Albion and Portland Timbers defender, tells The Athletic. “I did it to the late, great Papa Bouba Diop at Fulham.”

    Ridgewell, now a coach with MLS side Portland, pauses as he thinks back to what happened next.

    “You know that GIF when Jim Carrey wipes his mouth and changes his demeanour? Well, Bouba Diop turned around, rubbed his back and went: ‘What. Did. You. Just. Do?’ And I thought: ‘S—.’

    “He said: ‘I’ll see you in the tunnel.’ I was like: ‘No you f—ing won’t!’ After the game, I stayed out there (on the pitch) so long, even clapping the home fans, so that I didn’t have to go back down the tunnel!”

    Tunnels in football, like most things in life, aren’t what they used to be. For a start, the more spacious layouts of modern stadiums mean that players are rarely rubbing shoulders with one another when they line up in them beforehand, taking away a lot of the tension.

    The fixtures and fittings have changed in the area between the dressing rooms and the pitch too – glass has replaced concrete blocks at Manchester City so the VIPs in the ‘Tunnel Club’ can rubber-neck – and so has the behaviour of the players.

    “Gary Neville and Roy Keane wouldn’t even look at their opponents – Gary didn’t even look at his brother,” says one current player, who has asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships, as he recalls the scene at Goodison Park when Gary was captain of United, with Phil wearing the armband for home side Everton.

    “It was about the bravado of ‘We’re going to war!’ But – and I’m saying this as someone who is old-school — football isn’t about going to war any more. You can barely make a tackle these days. So it’s a lot more friendly in the tunnel now.”

    In other words, it’s more a case of Jamie Vardy being the court jester, rocking back on his heels and mocking Kasper Schmeichel with his “Ooh, Danish friends!” joke based on a scene in UK sitcom The Inbetweeners as his Leicester team-mate palled around with then-Southampton midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, rather than Keane going nose to nose with Patrick Vieira, the “Crazy Gang” snorting Deep Heat or a couple of Nottingham Forest midfielders barking like dogs.

    “Exactly,” replies the same player. “When I was younger, if the cameras were there, people didn’t even want to be seen saying hello to opposition players. But everyone is hugging and laughing now, high-fiving mascots – it’s a lot more relaxed.”

    Ridgewell nods.

    “I saw the Goodison tunnel on TV the other day and thought: ‘That looks nice.’ There were pictures on the wall. But when I used to walk down there it was pure Goodison — dirty and dingy. It set the stage for what you were going into — it was like a dungeon walk.

    “But now you’ve got people asking for shirts before games, and asking how the wife and kids are doing. I wouldn’t have asked one of our players that!”

    It feels like a sign of the times that a minor incident just outside the tunnel involving Manchester City’s Kyle Walker and one of the Arsenal backroom staff, after the Premier League game between the two clubs at the latter’s Emirates Stadium last month, caused such a stir.

    Walker refused to shake hands with Nicolas Jover after the 1-0 defeat on the basis that Arsenal’s set-piece coach, who formerly held that job at City, refused to do the same when Pep Guardiola’s side beat them last season. A storm in a tea cup if ever there was one.

    Indeed, post-match feuds in the tunnel are rare now.

    In the February of last season, Leeds United thought it was disrespectful that Nottingham Forest had their dressing room door open and music blaring out after defeating them 1-0. In a classic case of tit for tat, Leeds did the same to Forest when they won the return fixture at Elland Road two months later. Forest head coach Steve Cooper wasn’t happy and a security guard ended up intervening in the tunnel.

    All of that feels rather tame, though, especially compared to the days when John Fashanu’s Wimbledon debut coincided with a 22-man brawl in the tunnel of their away game at Portsmouth or, from personal experience, when you looked across and saw the opposition striker being throttled before a ball had been kicked.

    “Don’t f—ing ruin our big day,” Jason Perry, the former Wales international defender, strongly advised Brett Ormerod, who was Blackpool’s star player and two weeks away from a move to the Premier League with Southampton when we lined up with Newport County, then in the seventh tier of the English game, away at Bloomfield Road for an FA Cup first round tie in November 2001. Perry had his hands around Ormerod’s throat at the time.

    It would be stretching it to say that managers and players thought games could be won or lost in the tunnel back then, but there was certainly a school of thought that a bit of intimidation could help.

    Aidy Boothroyd even put on an exercise before a play-off semi-final a decade ago where he divided his Northampton Town squad into two groups and the players had to practise leaving the dressing rooms and lining up in the tunnel.

    “It didn’t do us any favours, by the way. We got pumped (3-0 by Bradford City) in the final,” Clive Platt, who was playing for Northampton at the time and now works as a football agent, says. “I actually did that before with another manager as well — Martin Allen, when I was with MK Dons. Again, it was to gain that advantage before the game kicks off.


    Aidy Boothroyd wanted Northampton to use the tunnel as a weapon (Pete Norton/Getty Images)

    “Aidy did it slightly differently. Keeping you waiting was a tactic of some teams. But he (Boothroyd) used to make us go out early, especially in those play-off matches, and stand in the middle of the tunnel.

    “He was like: ‘Go and stand in the middle, pretty much on your tip-toes, jumping up and down, looking as big as possible, and also taking up as much room as possible,’ to kind of show that it’s our tunnel, not theirs.”

    Occasionally, the tunnel can be more intimidating than the opposition.

    Galatasaray, back in the 1990s, was a case in point.

    Chelsea travelled to Istanbul for a Champions League game in October 1999.

    A window on their team coach was smashed on the way to the stadium and that set the tone for what was to follow. Welcome to Hell, as Galatasaray liked to say at the time.

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    Attacked, detained, deported: Inside Man United’s ‘Welcome to Hell’ game, 30 years on

    “I was in the tunnel a bit further back and you could hear the noise, which sounded like there was a massive hailstorm outside as you came up the steps,” Graeme Le Saux tells The Athletic. “I was thinking: ‘It (the weather) wasn’t meant to be like that.’ But then as you come out, there’s this roof of riot shields, like an extended tunnel, and people are launching all sorts of things at the riot police.”

    It was an extraordinary scene, which is captured in the picture below, and is seared into Le Saux’s mind.


    Riot police ‘protect’ Chelsea at Galatasaray in 1999 (Ben Radford/Allsport)

    “If the shields hadn’t been there, I don’t think they’d have thrown stuff at us. It’s all part of this build-up and I presume the riot police are in on it! Because as soon as you come out, they don’t carry on throwing things. It’s like the ultimate distraction and intimidation.

    “But once the game starts, you’re almost in an exclusion zone, you’re looking in rather than out. There was so much nervous tension in us going out but we channelled it into a performance and we took them apart.”

    Chelsea, inspired by Tore Andre Flo, won 5-0 and turned a cauldron into a cakewalk.

    Red Star Belgrade’s Rajko Mitic Stadium is another of those places where minds can easily wander in the tunnel — and not in a good way.

    With the changing rooms outside the stadium itself, it is a 240m walk from there to the playing surface — more than two football pitches end to end, by far the longest in Europe. The tunnel itself is not for the faint-hearted: anyone taller than 6ft (182cm) needs to stoop in places, just 15cm of concrete separates the ceiling from the ultras in the stand above it, and the riot police presence along the route is unnerving rather than reassuring.

    Gavin McCann played and won there with Bolton Wanderers in the UEFA Cup (today’s Europa League) in 2007.

    “There’s a good picture of Gary Speed leading us out,” the former Aston Villa and Sunderland midfielder says of the photo below. “It is a proper tunnel — long and dark — and then you’ve got the athletics track to cross as well when you get out of it. There were riot police at the top and they were also lined up in the tunnel.

    “They try to intimidate you, it’s as simple as that. But we went there and turned them over.”


    Gary Speed leads Bolton out through Red Star’s tunnel in 2007 (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

    The psychological side before a game is fascinating, especially as kick-off nears. Nerves and anxiety can easily take over, so much so that it’s not uncommon for players to vomit just before lining up in the tunnel — Per Mertesacker would often do that in his days with Arsenal.

    “As a player, you’re constantly overcoming the demons,” Le Saux adds. “The worst bit for me throughout my whole career was the journey to any stadium. It’s no man’s land. You can’t do any more preparation and you can’t get into the zone of being ready to play because there’s too long a gap.”

    In the tunnel, it’s different — it’s game time.

    “Then, it’s a fine line between focus, that bit of bravado and posturing, but there’s also that internal dialogue of getting ready to play,” Le Saux says. “Tunnels, for me, are sacred places — the Anfield sign at Liverpool is one of them. They’re waiting rooms where you come out onto the pitch, when you’re crossing that Rubicon and passing the point of no return.”


    Anfield’s tunnel, complete with its famous sign, in 2007, before redevelopment (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

    It’s almost a game before the game.

    For example, at Goodison, where the tunnel is narrow and goes down some steps and then back up again to the pitch, Le Saux would try to stand on one of the higher steps, especially if 6ft 4in (193cm) Everton striker Duncan Ferguson was around.

    “I was still shorter than him but at least I could look into his eyes as opposed to into his nostrils,” he says, smiling. “Even if you are nervous, you’ve got to put on a front.

    “Playing against Wimbledon, (John) Fashanu, the stuff they would say, the jumping up and down, the music, the shirts off, snorting Deep Heat and Vicks VapoRub – I wouldn’t be surprised if they were rubbing it in their eyes.

    “I remember we played Poland with England and they had what felt like the world’s longest tunnel. Their centre-back, who was 6ft 4in and a bruiser, jumped up and headed an iron girder on purpose – and then looked at us.”

    Le Saux can laugh about it all now, including the way that some players had no interest in engaging with the children serving as mascots after emerging from a dressing room that was full of adrenaline and testosterone.

    Some players overthink the game during those final moments and end up inhibited on the pitch. Others zone out and perform.

    “Ultimately, that’s what will define you in some ways,” Le Saux adds. “Coming back to Galatasaray and the build-up in the tunnel before the game, it would have been so easy to have felt my hamstring that day. But I think top-level players know that the outcome… that’s what we play for.”

    The referee always rings twice.

    Players are expected to be out and into the tunnel sharpish after the official sounds a bell for a second time. There is a 30-second period of grace before each half, and clubs will be fined if their players arrive any later.

    Amid all the tension and the thousand-yard stares back in the day, mascots occasionally lightened the mood.

    In 2006, Jake Nickless, who was a Chelsea fan and five years old at the time, put a thumb to his nose when Steven Gerrard went to shake his hand in the tunnel at Stamford Bridge. Nickless claimed years later that his father had put him up to the stunt and promised him some PlayStation games in return.

    As for Gerrard, he was thrown totally off-guard. “The only time I smiled in the tunnel was when the Chelsea mascot played a trick on me,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I went to shake his hand and he pulled a face at me. If it was an adult I would have wanted to wring their neck!’”

    Players can be childish too, though.

    “One of our first games of the season with Forest was against Arsenal away,” Andy Johnson says, recalling a match at Highbury in 1998. “We were lining up against Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit, and Geoff Thomas said to me: ‘When we get in the tunnel, look at them and start barking and growling at them like a dog.’ So the two of us were doing that — barking like dogs — at two World Cup winners (with France, little more than a month before), who were looking at us like we’d gone mad.”

    For the game’s gym addicts, it’s the perfect time to flex.

    Danny Shittu had a reputation for emerging from the changing room with his shirt off – “19 stones (266lb; 120kg) of prime beef, letting out monosyllabic and neanderthal grunts and screams, beating his chest all the while,” is how Clarke Carlisle once described his former Queens Park Rangers team-mate.

    Others can get carried away with their own voice.

    “I think in the tunnel I was too excited — that was down to just childishness,” goalkeeper Joe Hart reflected after his England side’s dismal showing at the 2016 European Championship, where he was filmed before the group game against neighbours and long-time rivals Wales shouting expletives outside the dressing rooms. “I thought it was the right thing to do. I just let my emotions get the better of me.”

    The notorious Keane-Vieira episode at Highbury in 2005 was unusual in the sense that tunnel altercations — and that one was a proper bust-up — generally happen after matches, not before them.

    Indeed, Manchester United and Arsenal have plenty of history in that department.

    “The Battle of the Buffet” at Old Trafford in that 2004-05 season’s reverse fixture the previous October goes straight in at number 1 here.

    Fuelled by a sense of injustice after United were awarded a controversial second-half penalty for the first of their two goals, and angry that Arsenal’s 49-match unbeaten Premier League run had come to an end, Cesc Fabregas hurled a slice of pizza (believed to be Margherita but the topping was never confirmed) that hit United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, of all people.

    Seventeen years later, Fabregas finally came clean.

    The Spaniard told UK broadcaster ITV Sport that he was both hungry and frustrated when he got to the dressing room after the game, and explained that he “took a slice of pizza” and then “started hearing noises” in the tunnel.

    “You started seeing (Arsenal manager) Arsene Wenger and players everywhere,” Fabregas said. “The first thing that occurred to me was to throw the pizza, because I didn’t have the power, or the courage maybe, to go into that fight. They were monsters in there.”

    The row that followed between Wenger and Ferguson, both in the tunnel and publicly, was box office.

    “In the tunnel, he (Wenger) was publicly criticising my players, calling them cheats,” Ferguson said three months later. “I was told about this when they came into the dressing room, so I went out into the tunnel and said to him: ‘You get in there (the away dressing room) and behave yourself, leave my players alone.’ He came sprinting towards me with his hands raised saying: ‘What do you want to do about it?’ He was standing right there.”

    Managers and coaches are every bit as likely as players to cause problems in the tunnel. Haranguing referees at half-time, as well as full-time, was commonplace in the past, but happens a lot less frequently now.

    Jose Mourinho had form for that, and more.

    Ridgewell hasn’t forgotten a fracas involving Mourinho at Stamford Bridge in 2013, when Chelsea were awarded a dubious late penalty that allowed them to avoid defeat against his West Brom side in the Premier League. In the melee that followed in the tunnel, West Brom defender Jonas Olsson claimed home manager Mourinho called him “a Mickey Mouse player”.

    “It still sticks in my brain now,” Ridgewell says, a decade later. “We were winning 2-1 and they got a naughty penalty. It all kicked off over that, and as we were going down the tunnel, you’ve got Jose Mourinho standing at the top of the stairs, leaning over one of their players, and Jonas Olsson was at the bottom trying to get to him.

    “I recall Mourinho saying: ‘You lot are just a Mickey Mouse club.’ If he said: ‘Micky Mouse player’, that would explain why he set Jonas off.

    “I love Jose Mourinho, but that left a sour taste, because we battered them that day. But it was a classic tunnel moment.”

    (Additional material: Phil Hay)

    (Top photos: PA Images via Getty Images & iStock; design: Samuel Richardson)

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  • ‘It started with a horse’: The bizarre row that sparked United’s decline

    ‘It started with a horse’: The bizarre row that sparked United’s decline

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    These days, the relevant people at Manchester United prefer not to talk about the wild, eccentric story that identifies a champion racehorse, Rock of Gibraltar, as the catalyst for everything that has gone so spectacularly wrong for the club ever since.

    Sir Alex Ferguson, in particular, has made it clear the subject is off-bounds.

    Ferguson’s achievements at Old Trafford make him the most successful British manager there has ever been. But the Rock of Gibraltar affair in 2003 was not one of his successes and, for United, the consequences are still being felt to this day.

    A new generation of United fans, meanwhile, might think the extraordinary chain of events that led, ultimately, to the fall of a once-mighty team — Malcolm Glazer’s takeover, the fan protests, the debts, the years of decline, the rancour and recriminations — seem a bit far-fetched.

    “The biggest football team in England,” might come the response, “and you’re seriously telling me it all started to unravel because of a racehorse?”.

    Well, yes, though not just an ordinary racehorse, bearing in mind the achievements of ‘Rocky’ in happier times, when it was registered under Ferguson’s name via his friendship with John Magnier and JP McManus, aka the ‘Coolmore Mafia’, two Irish businessmen who turned out to be the hardest opponents the Scot ever encountered.

    To introduce them properly, Magnier and McManus were the richest men in Ireland, and it hardly did them justice when the English media described them as simply racehorse owners. Their power and wealth went much further than that. Ferguson had befriended them through his love of horseracing and, in turn, persuaded them to buy their way into United as shareholders.

    It was a formidable alliance. Magnier and McManus, operating from the Coolmore stables on 7,000 acres of rural farmland in County Tipperary, were at the top of their profession. So was Ferguson, managing the Premier League champions, and so was Rock of Gibraltar, developing a reputation as a serial winner on the biggest stage.

    “I went into racing for the simple reason of the release and the enjoyment away from my own job,” said Ferguson in a four-page interview published by The Players’ Club, the official magazine of the Professional Footballers’ Association, in 2002. “It (football management) is a pretty exhausting job, it is demanding. Somewhere along the line, you’ve got to find a release.”

    The association with Rock of Gibraltar began, he explained, after the then colt had raced in the Coventry Stakes at Ascot the previous year. It finished sixth. “Nobody knew how good Rock of Gibraltar was going to be, not John Magnier, not (trainer) Aidan O’Brien and not me,” said Ferguson in the same article. “I’ll probably never get a horse as good as this again.”


    Ferguson with Rock of Gibraltar after it won the St James Palace Stakes in 2002 (Julian Herbert/Getty Images)

    And then, as often happens with men of wealth, they fell out over money. Attitudes hardened. Ferguson started litigation and, almost certainly, under-estimated who he was dealing with. He was told it was a mistake, but went ahead with it anyway.

    Everything since at Old Trafford can be traced back to that falling-out.

    Would the Glazers have seized control of United otherwise? Unlikely. Would the club be in such a mess now? Unlikely. Does it all link back to Rock of Gibraltar? It’s a long story but, yes, absolutely.

    All of which explains why the author and former newspaper editor Chris Blackhurst has a chapter titled “It all started with the horse” in his book ‘The World’s Biggest Cash Machine: Manchester United, the Glazers and the Struggle for Football’s Soul’, which is being published later this week, and why he writes in its introduction that the U.S-based Glazer family “have a racehorse and an almighty personal falling out to thank for their amazing good fortune”.

    Today (Monday) is the first anniversary of Rock of Gibraltar succumbing to a heart attack, at the age of 23, and the fact the horse has its own Wikipedia page is a testament to the number of occasions it was paraded in the winners’ circle. It was, to quote former champion jockey Richard Hughes, “a wonder horse, the best in the world.” It was also running in Ferguson’s colours — the red and white of the football club he managed.

    Ferguson, however, claimed he was entitled to half of Rock of Gibraltar’s stud rights — a breeding programme potentially worth tens of millions of pounds — as part of what he believed to be a gentlemen’s agreement with Coolmore when the horse was put in his name.

    Coolmore’s view was that Ferguson had badly misunderstood, maybe because he was new to the industry. Magnier and McManus said no such deal had been put in place, and nor would it ever have been, given the huge numbers potentially involved.

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    Manchester United: Purpose, passion, profit – Sir Alex Ferguson, the businessman

    “Ferguson, of course, was not really the co-owner,” writes Blackhurst. “The horse was registered in his name, but it was someone else’s property. No money ever changed hands, Alex Ferguson never bought and paid for a share in the horse.” It was, the author explains, an entirely different arrangement. “Magnier was grateful to Ferguson. He said it was good of him to do it, to put his name on the horse and, if it won, make the speech.”

    Ferguson believed the stud fees for such a brilliant thoroughbred could make him a fortune and, knowing what we do now, he was not wrong (Rock of Gibraltar sired 256 horses that entered races, including 77 worldwide winners and 16 at the highest level). Relations soured. Legal letters started to fly about. A writ was served by Ferguson and an all-out war was declared between United’s manager and the club’s two biggest shareholders.

    Two decades on, The Athletic has been told the United board were horrified by this position. They also took independent advice that came back to say Ferguson had little chance of winning his case. He pressed on, using a Dublin barrister.

    Roy Keane also felt entitled, as United’s captain, to challenge his manager about it.

    Keane, one of Irish football’s greats, advised Ferguson it was unwise to take on Magnier and McManus. “I told him I didn’t think it was good for the club,” Keane writes in his 2014 autobiography. “He was just a mascot for them (Coolmore). Walking round with this Rock of Gibraltar — ‘Look at me, how big I am’ — and he didn’t even own the bloody thing.”


    Keane warned Ferguson about the risks of taking on the ‘Coolmore Mafia’ (Phil Cole/Getty Images)

    All the while, the Glazers were watching.

    The Americans already had a stake in United, as well as being owners of NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Nobody, however, could be sure of their motives at that point.

    Instead, the media — unaware of the huge split between Ferguson and his Irish allies — were full of stories about Magnier and McManus solidifying their position by buying up shares, including entertainment magnate Rupert Murdoch’s stake, through a company they owned in the Caribbean’s Virgin Islands called Cubic Expression.

    The common belief was that they were preparing a takeover in tandem with Ferguson, their friend who had a long-held ambition to own the club. In reality, they were turning the screw on Ferguson, establishing themselves as United’s majority shareholders, with all the politics and extreme awkwardness that caused the club employee who was suing them.

    It was a power-play: tactical, aggressive and, for Ferguson, deeply unsettling. He had been fighting all his life, ever since his days growing up in Govan, at the heart of Glasgow’s shipbuilding industry. But this was different. It had quickly become clear he had bitten off more than he could chew.

    Patrick Harverson, then United’s director of communications, spoke to an Irish journalist after the news came out about Ferguson launching legal proceedings against Magnier and McManus. “I am being serious,” came the warning. “Whatever you do, don’t mess with them.”

    Blackhurst, an award-winning writer, heard more on the same theme while researching his book, which involved visiting the Coolmore stables. A friend of Magnier’s told him: ‘The softest thing about John is his teeth.”

    Coolmore had a formidable PR company working on its behalf, which was adept at manipulating the English media and planting a series of stories to turn the newspaper headlines against Ferguson.

    At United’s annual general meeting, several awkward questions were asked about Ferguson’s transfer activity by half a dozen individuals posing as shareholders when it turned out they were hired actors. It was never clear who paid them.

    Magnier and McManus employed their own researchers too, and turned up the heat by hiring Kroll, an international private intelligence firm, to take a closer look at Ferguson’s involvement with United’s transfer dealings, and the frequent involvement in them of his football-agent son, Jason.

    It was a hugely aggressive move and on January 16, 2004, they went for the jugular in the form of a letter, marked “strictly private & confidential”, to Sir Roy Gardner, then United’s PLC chairman.

    That letter contained 99 questions Coolmore wanted the board to answer. Over eight pages, it was intended to make the club, and Ferguson in particular, squirm. Many of the questions were about player purchases and, devastatingly for Ferguson and United, the entire document found its way to Charles Sale, a prolific story-getter for the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper.

    “It blew the lid off,” Sale says of his exclusive. “As JP McManus said of the relationship with Ferguson, ‘Once the toothpaste comes out of the tube, it’s very difficult to put it back in’. The 99 questions were Coolmore squeezing the toothpaste.”


    Ferguson’s relationship with McManus, left, soured (David Davies – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)

    Coolmore followed that up with another letter to Gardner, also leaked to the media, asking about Ferguson’s contract extension, his age and health issues. These were wounding attacks and, for United, a source of enough embarrassment for an edict to be passed that they could not allow the manager’s son to act for them in transfer negotiations again.

    Ferguson was on the ropes and the regular journalists on United’s beat can recall seeing his vulnerability, close up, in a way they had never witnessed before or since. In one audience with Manchester’s football writers, he talked about people rummaging through Jason’s bins and, in a performance that felt strategically aimed at the club’s supporters, how distressing it was for himself.

    “What amazed me was that Ferguson talked about it at all,” recalls Tim Rich, then the northern football correspondent for UK newspaper The Independent. “Usually, he shut down any conversation that veered from team affairs.

    “When, in happier times with the Coolmore Mafia, the Daily Star (another British paper) suggested Magnier and McManus wanted to make him chairman, he rounded on the newspaper’s United writer, Bill Thornton. Now, instead of batting the question away or aggressively rounding on us, he talked. His voice was lower and more halting than usual but he explained this was something he had to do and he was doing it because it was morally the right thing to do.

    “I don’t think there was a follow-up question — maybe we were too amazed at what we had got, maybe he didn’t allow one — but nobody questioned him on the absurdity of a club employee suing its major shareholders.”

    It had an effect, though.

    Ferguson had brought happiness to millions of United fans. He had, to use his own quote, “knocked Liverpool off their f***ing perch” after being appointed in 1986 and re-established United as the leading team in the country. Now it was those fans’ turn to come out fighting for him.

    Protest groups by the names of Manchester Education Committee and United 4 Action sought to target Magnier and McManus where it would hurt them most.


    A vendor sells anti-John Magnier merchandise outside Old Trafford (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

    The first demonstration took place the following month at Hereford racecourse in the south west of England, when 30 or so protestors ran on the track before a race featuring Coolmore-owned horse Majestic Moonbeam, hung banners over the fences and threw glass into the paddocks, where horses are paraded before races. A follow-up protest was planned for the Cheltenham Festival, the pinnacle of the British jump racing calendar, in the March, only for Ferguson to go public and ask the fans to back off.

    The legalities over Rock of Gibraltar were eventually settled out of court, with United’s manager receiving £2.5million ($3m), tax-free, if he agreed to drop all claims over the horse. Ferguson admitted there had been a “misunderstanding.”

    But the whole process had been gruelling on both sides and McManus explains in Blackhurst’s book why, by the time that settlement was made, he and Magnier had already decided to sell their stake in United and get out of football.

    “It was part of my life for a while but, for something that was meant to be a bit of pleasure at the start, it ended not being so pleasurable,” he says. “I couldn’t get far enough away from it quickly enough.”

    The final straw? “When the fans stopped the racing that day in Hereford. I said, ‘I’ve had enough’.”

    One problem: who was waiting in the wings?

    “Riding the speculative boom caused by Coolmore’s huge share purchases was Malcolm Glazer,” John-Paul O’Neill, founder of FC United of Manchester, the breakaway club formed by United supporters in response to the Glazer takeover, tells The Athletic.

    “After Ferguson embarrassingly backed down in the public spat, and with Coolmore looking to divest, Glazer was forced to stick or twist on his own investment. He chose the latter, (with) Coolmore’s holding allowing the only real viable way to a full leverage buyout.”


    Malcolm Glazer seized his opportunity at United (Peter Muhly/AFP via Getty Images)

    And so, a new era for United was about to begin.

    On May 12, 2005, Magnier and McManus sold their stake to the Glazers, making nearly £100million profit. The Americans moved into power at Old Trafford and, while history will always remember Ferguson as a manager of authentic greatness, many fans on the front line of the anti-Glazer protests came to feel let down.

    “Ferguson’s support was crucial to the banks lending Glazer the money,” O’Neill says of the takeover. “He rejected supporters’ private appeals to quit in protest, claiming he had to think about the staff he worked alongside.

    “This faux solidarity would, in future, only be extended to the Glazers. ‘Wonderful owners,’ he would laughably suggest. ‘No value in the market,’ he would say to excuse the absence of funds for meaningful transfer dealings, as the emergent Manchester City hoovered up the likes of Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Vincent Kompany for relative peanuts.”

    Ferguson, who now attends matches as a director of the football board and highly paid ambassador, retired as manager at the end of the 2012-13 season — after delivering United’s most recent Premier League title. “Even then, there was no desire (from him) to side with fans increasingly disillusioned with owners crippling the club,” says O’Neill. “The supposed Socialist backing the arch-capitalists to the very end.”


    Supporters protest the Glazers behind Ferguson in 2010 (Andrew Yates/AFP via Getty Images)

    In Ferguson’s most recent book, Leading, published in 2015, there is not a single word about Rock of Gibraltar, the split from Coolmore and what it meant for the club he managed for 26 years.

    His previous book, a 2013 autobiography, does touch upon it, but only for a few sentences. “I have to say that at no point was I sidetracked from my duties as manager of Manchester United,” he wrote. “It didn’t affect my love of racing and I am on good terms now with John Magnier, the leading figure at Coolmore.”

    That last line comes as a surprise to some of the people who are familiar with this story and suspect there is, in fact, no relationship, or contact, between the two men. So why say it? It is difficult to know — Ferguson chose not to be interviewed for Blackhurst’s book.

    As for Rock of Gibraltar, its last years were spent at the Magnier family’s Castlehyde Stud in County Cork. A plaque commemorates the horse. There are pictures on the walls at Castlehyde and, even if nobody at Old Trafford likes discussing this part of the story, its impact is still being felt in Manchester

    Just over a week ago, a takeover bid by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar’s royal family collapsed because the two parties could not agree on money. After 18 years of ownership, including a decade since the last Premier League trophy, the Glazers continue to run the club amid a backdrop of spiralling results, fan protests and open hostility.

    They are said by some associates to value United at close to £10billion.

    The last line of The World’s Biggest Cash Machine neatly sums it up:

    “It’s not known if the Glazers ever look heavenwards and give thanks to Rock of Gibraltar for their immense good fortune.”

    (Additional reporting: Phil Hay)

    (Top photos: John Magnier and JP McManus & Sir Alex Ferguson with Rock of Gibraltar; Getty Images)

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  • Charlton was ordinary and extraordinary – he embodied the spirit of football

    Charlton was ordinary and extraordinary – he embodied the spirit of football

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    They gathered, as one day they knew they would, on the forecourt at Old Trafford, the flowers of Manchester in their hands. They came to stand at the Holy Trinity statue of Denis Law, George Best and Sir Bobby Charlton with tears in their eyes, sadness in their souls and tight fistfuls of memories.

    All knew the day would come when Charlton was no longer the galloping boy of the 1950s or the hero of the 1960s, a figure who seemed born to light up Saturday afternoons; but, still, the news that, at 86, Charlton has gone arrived with dismaying impact.

    Few footballers can claim to be their country’s finest, but his nomination to be England’s greatest feels unquestionable.

    These matters are subjective, but Charlton’s natural talent — and his extraordinary life — make him a legitimate contender to be considered above all others.

    There is the longevity — 17 years in the first team at Manchester United, 20 years on the books. There are the United appearances and goals — 758 and 249. There are the honours — three league titles, an FA Cup, a European Cup. He was England’s Footballer of the Year in 1966 and he was European Footballer of the Year in 1966 (and runner-up in 1967 and 1968). There were 106 caps, spread over 13 years, featuring 49 often-unforgettable goals. And, of course, there was, in 1966, the World Cup triumph Charlton shared with his brother Jack.

    Yet as odd as it sounds, these form only part of the explanation of the appeal of Bobby Charlton. It went beyond what he did; it was about how he did it.

    At his peak, which went on and on, Charlton combined dynamism and grace, subtlety and power. Those forces would hurtle him across 10 yards of turf before unleashing a shot of such explosion he always seemed to be celebrating in mid-air. There was a gymnast’s bounce after some of those strikes at Wembley in the course of winning that ’66 World Cup.

    But each goal was always followed by a quiet handshake, maybe an arm around the shoulder, and a gentle trot back to the centre circle. Charlton knew he was good — how could he not? — but his modesty was not false, his laconic personality was genuine. He was the embodiment of values England as a country claimed to represent.

    This is why he was so famous — and he really was.

    United’s official reaction on Saturday included the statement: “It is fair to say that for decades ‘Bobby Charlton’ were two of the most widely used English words across the globe.” They were.


    (Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

    Not that Charlton was interested in fame or celebrity; he was a man of substance, a man made serious by his and United’s history.

    And this is why he was so cherished. People who never knew Bobby Charlton knew all about Bobby Charlton, while people who did know him, such as Pele, said this: “Bobby Charlton is more than one of the very greatest players, he is the spirit of football.”

    Now that is an epitaph.

    Because Pele, like everyone else, knew what Charlton had been through, what he had seen and how, with self-conscious restraint, he had dealt with it; a private character thrust uncomfortably into a public realm.

    As a young man, Charlton had been thrilled by his talent and by the gifts of those around him at United in the 1950s, the boys such as his great friends Duncan Edwards, Eddie Colman and David Pegg who became the ‘Busby Babes’. In a post-war decade, together they changed English football, a sporting definition of joy.

    But, also as a young man, Charlton experienced tragedy. On February 6, 1958, United’s aeroplane slid across the slush on the runway at Munich airport as it tried for a third time to depart and, in the crash that followed, 23 people were killed. Eight of them were Charlton’s team-mates, including Edwards, Colman and Pegg.

    Charlton was left unconscious as two more colleagues, Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes, tried to rescue passengers and United’s manager Matt Busby. Charlton was taken to hospital, and he recovered.

    But he did not recover. He may have returned to football — with undue haste in an era of stiff upper lips — but the pain inside could not be hidden. “Perhaps there was something on my face,” he was to say, “which I know can be mournful.”

    Charlton put his name to various ghostwritten books down the years, but it took him decades to revisit his life in full and publish an autobiography. That it then came in two volumes was a testament to the vastness of his experience and achievement. There are passages of nostalgic recollection that cannot but make the reader smile.

    But a seam throughout is that day in Munich. In the second volume, ostensibly about England, he used the phrase “wounded by life” and while the lyrical expression may have come from his masterly co-author, James Lawton, it was an observation derived from Charlton’s lived experience. It was his sentiment, having seen coal miners gathered daily at the pithead in his native Ashington in Northumberland, in the north east of England. One of those miners was his father.


    Charlton back in Ashington (Keystone/Getty Images)

    Charlton wrote lovingly of his upbringing in Ashington, “the biggest coal town in the world”, 20 miles north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and a cast of characters headed by his mother Cissie, who would have served Charles Dickens well.

    Cissie was a cousin of Jackie Milburn, the Newcastle United centre-forward who still holds legendary status at St James’ Park, where the main stand carries his surname. But Milburn was only one strand of the football dynasty into which Charlton was born in October 1937. There were four uncles who played professionally for Leeds United, Bradford City, Chesterfield and Leicester City.

    Then there was his uncle Buck, a well-known local poacher, and Uncle Tommy, who bought the boy Bobby his first pair of football boots — Playfair Pigskins. His father Robert, after whom Bobby was named, had the nickname ‘Boxer’, as he was locally a bare-knuckle fighter.

    “He was a miner, of course,” Charlton said of his father, “and that for me has always announced a man’s toughness.”

    On Beatrice Street, where he and brother Jack would celebrate their World Cup in the back lane — the lines of miners’ houses are so cramped there was no space at the front — Charlton understood harshness. Families, not just theirs, kept animals and grew vegetables in allotments: “When a pig was killed, it was a kind of fete; life could be hard as nails.” Even though coal was all around, people still scoured the nearby beaches to collect sea coal. That was free.

    With Jack, his big brother, there was also fishing, and bus trips to Newcastle and Sunderland to watch football. Bobby saw Stanley Matthews — “mysterious and thrilling” — and wanted to be Len Shackleton or Bobby Mitchell in the way children later would want to be Bobby Charlton.

    And then there was the knock on the door, followed by another knock. The floating force Charlton was to display as a professional — modern eyes might see him combining, say, the power of Steven Gerrard with the lightness of Phil Foden — was soon known away from the far north eastern corner of England he lived in.

    Geography and family connections said he should have joined Newcastle, but Milburn advised against their complacent youth system. A rather more efficient north east footballer, Don Revie, tried to persuade Charlton to join Manchester City, where Revie was redefining forward play.

    But by then Charlton wanted to go to Old Trafford.

    There, Busby was already transforming English football via style and youth. So the happy 16-year-old moved to Birch Avenue, five minutes from the ground, and met a gang of friends he adored. Charlton felt at ease in Manchester and would visit Colman at his home in Salford. What worried him was the sight of Edwards and the scale of his ability: “Could I play alongside this superboy Edwards?”.

    The 1957 United side. (Back row, left to right) Colin Webster, Wilf McGuinness, Jackie Blanchflower, John Doherty, Colman, (middle row) trainer Tom Curry, Foulkes, Charlton, Freddie Goodwin, Ray Wood, Bill Whelan, Mark Jones, Edwards, assistant trainer Bill Inglis, (front row) Dennis Viollet, John Berry, manager Busby, captain Roger Byrne, assistant manager Jimmy Murphy, Tommy Taylor, Pegg (Central Press/Getty Images)

    He could. Charlton starred in a glittering team that did not lose a Youth Cup game for five years. Then, in October 1956, “five days before my 19th birthday”, he was given his senior debut at Old Trafford. It was against Charlton Athletic, which could have been his name. He walked to the ground that morning, then scored twice in the first half. He was off and running.

    This was some team a teenager was prising his way into. United had won the league in 1951-52 and would do so again in 1955-56 and 1956-57, with Charlton included. In 1957-58, they were aiming for a treble and would have been the first to achieve it since Herbert Chapman’s Arsenal in the 1930s.

    Under Busby, United had become historic while being fiercely current. They were pioneers in European football when the game’s domestic authorities had been Little Englanders. Busby had a different mentality and his players loved it. This is why they were in Munich in February 1958.

    United had just played Red Star in Belgrade in the second leg of a European Cup quarter-final. They drew the game, so went through. The plane home from Yugoslavia stopped in Munich for refuelling. The crash and desolating loss of life that followed altered Charlton forever. He was 20.

    Some fifty years later, he began his autobiography with: “First I had to go back to Munich. Without doing that, I couldn’t begin to define my life… sometimes I feel it quite lightly, a mere brushstroke across an otherwise happy mood. Sometimes it engulfs me with terrible regret and sadness — and guilt that I walked away and found so much.”

    A comparable accident today would see survivors hospitalised, possibly for months, for trauma. In 1958, Charlton played three weeks later.

    First, he went back to Ashington. With Jimmy Murphy, United’s brilliant coach who did so much for the club post-Munich, Charlton took the train from Munich to the Hook of Holland and from there a ferry to Harwich in Essex. Jack and Cissie picked him up, but Bobby knew “nothing would be quite so simple ever again. Some, including Jack, insist that Munich changed me. If it did, I like to think that eventually, it was for the better”.

    United played on that season and reached the FA Cup final, incredibly. Ten weeks after Munich, he was then selected to play for England, incredibly. It was against Scotland at Hampden Park in Glasgow, hardly the tamest of occasions.

    Of course, Charlton scored.

    But he did not celebrate.

    He had become “reluctant to trust happiness” and thought it “somehow wrong”, with his United friends so recently buried. The great Tom Finney, a player Charlton revered, crossed the ball for the goal, and the Scotland goalkeeper Tommy Younger congratulated him afterwards. It was a mark of how greater Britain felt about the boyish Bobby Charlton and the clear anguish he carried onto a pitch.

    The Newcastle-born novelist Gordon Burn described his face as possessing “the under-colour of worry”.

    Charlton never forgot that gesture from Younger. It added to the respect he had for Scotsmen, via Busby and later another United manager in Alex Ferguson.


    Charlton in hospital after the Munich air disaster (Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

    United finished ninth in that devastating 1957-58 season. They rallied somehow to come second in 1958-59 but by 1962 they were 15th, and a year later 19th.

    But in 1962-63 the focus had switched to the FA Cup again and United’s charge to lifting it coincided with the signing of Law.

    “We looked like Manchester United again,” Charlton said.

    Self-effacing, he had sacrificed his place in the middle of the team to play on the wing, at Busby’s suggestion. It was an experiment that lasted the guts of three seasons. Then it suddenly ended, miraculously in Charlton’s opinion: “The miracle had a name. It was called George Best.”

    United and Busby now had Charlton, Law and Best, a genius blend of skill, commitment and swagger. “About the town and the country, you had the growing sense that football fans had a feeling they just had to see us play.”

    The league championship was regained in 1965, then won again in 1967. Each title brought a return to the European Cup and to flying around the continent. The first of those campaigns took United to a semi-final — back in Belgrade. They lost on aggregate, the distress of defeat added to by the venue.

    Charlton thought, “We will never win the European Cup now”, and United also lost an FA Cup semi-final to Everton days later.

    So they had to do it all again and in 1968, against Eusebio’s Benfica at Wembley, they did, lifting the trophy Busby had set his heart on more than a decade earlier. Charlton, who almost nonchalantly scored the first and fourth goals in a 4-1 victory, was overcome with emotion at the end. He was so dehydrated, he fainted three times after returning to his hotel room and did not join in the celebrations. He was thinking of those not there and the person he called ‘the Old Man’ — Busby.

    “When the final whistle went,” Charlton wrote, “my strongest sensation was worry for the Old Man. He really was, I felt, an old man. He had been through so much… for days he had been reminded of the meaning of the game, the legacy of Munich and how his boys had died in pursuit of this trophy.”

    Best was 22 the week before the final; Charlton’s next birthday was his 31st. The two were different culturally and it caused a rupture. Best saw 1968 as the start of something, whereas Charlton said, “There was an understanding that something was over, something that had dominated our lives for so long.”

    In the midst of everything, in 1966, Charlton led England by example to the World Cup final and a 4-2 victory, also at Wembley, over West Germany. He called July 30, 1966 “the diamond of my days”.

    It cemented his status as both a national treasure and a global icon saluted by Pele. In the 1969 film, Kes, there is the glorious scene in which a brusque schoolteacher pretends to be Charlton during a games lesson. In 1994, Charlton was knighted by the Queen.

    Yet when it came to ranking the World Cup and the European Cup, he considered the latter more difficult to capture.

    “The European Cup, I have always reckoned, was much harder to win than England’s World Cup. The World Cup ran over just four weeks and we had the advantage of playing all our games at home. It takes effectively two years to win the European Cup and that’s a long time.”

    United took their defence of the trophy to the semi-finals, but they lost 2-1 to AC Milan — “a pivotal moment in our history”. Soon, Best went missing and in 1973 Charlton played his last United game. Aged 35, he moved to become player-manager of neighbours Preston North End, former England team-mate Finney’s club.

    It didn’t work, and it was not until 1984 that Charlton returned to the game in a significant capacity. That was as a United director. Two years later, he was involved in the appointment of Ferguson, the man who in 1999 would bring the European Cup back to Old Trafford.

    Charlton stayed on and would always be there on a matchday. Until recent years, when he started to succumb to dementia, he would be in the United dressing room after games, cheering or consoling. Michael Carrick and Wayne Rooney spoke on Saturday of understanding what Charlton’s presence meant. When Busby died in 1994, Charlton said: “He was Manchester United and, I will always like to think, so am I.”


    Charlton in 2018 (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

    Brother Jack had retired from playing for Leeds United that same day in 1973, but he was part of another rupture for Bobby, this time with the family in Ashington.

    A slice of Bobby’s early affection for his adopted home in Manchester was meeting and marrying Norma in 1961 — if you want an example of how ‘tapping up’ used to be, the couple received a present from Santiago Bernabeu, president of Real Madrid, on their wedding day.

    Even less discreet was the Saturday morning when Liverpool manager Bill Shankly turned up in Charlton’s garden in Cheshire. Shankly had come “for some football talk”, Charlton recalled. “I said to Norma, ‘I’m sorry, love, but I think you’ll have to put the kettle on’.”

    Charlton remembered he went off to his game and left Norma and Shankly chatting. “When I returned, Norma explained the Liverpool team bus had eventually pulled up outside our home.”

    They are just two measures of the esteem in which Charlton was held.

    The retelling of that demonstrated a lighter side. He and Nobby Stiles were laugh-out-loud friends – Bobby and Nobby – while it was Best who in 1968 identified Charlton as “the dressing-room jester”.

    Eventually, he and Best would reconcile, and so would he and Jack. Cissie and Jack thought Norma had helped Bobby forget his Ashington roots. Bobby insisted otherwise — he and Norma were together for nearly 70 years — and an example came in October 1988.

    Charlton was back in his native north east for the funeral of his beloved Milburn. In the thronged procession from Newcastle Cathedral, he saw sadness everywhere. All he could hear was silence. He did not like it. He associated Milburn with roaring crowds and excitement.

    Then Bob Stokoe, who had been a Newcastle player with Milburn and later Sunderland manager, pulled up in his car. He told Charlton to get in, and Stokoe was not someone to be disagreed with. They observed their surroundings and Charlton said: “Along with Bob, I noticed how solemn were the people lining the route… they were showing respect, of course, but I felt there should be a celebration of a great life — I wanted to hear applause.”

    It may be an indication of how we should respond to Charlton’s death, with applause.

    Perhaps we should let the bells ring. Because he was the ultimate, the boy who had to become a man, the man who played like a boy. He was the reason we went to watch football and play football. His was the name in a million schoolyard commentaries. His was a football life, but so much more, profound for reasons Charlton never sought.

    Ordinary and extraordinary, farewell Sir Bobby Charlton.

    (Top photos: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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  • We ranked every Premier League stadium so you could shout at us

    We ranked every Premier League stadium so you could shout at us

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    Welcome to The Athletic’s Premier League stadium rankings, an exercise in entertainment, creating arguments nobody can win and questionable mathematics.

    Before we start, we should beg for forgiveness. This is an almost impossible task and however we choose categories, weight categories and then mark the teams is going to annoy you. It’s a subjective topic and there isn’t a right answer.

    All we ask is that you know we have put far too many hours into all this, tried to make it as fair as possible, and are not deliberately trying to upset anyone.

    So take a seat — or stand, if you prefer — maybe get one of those squeezy stress balls and enjoy. Hey, you might even agree with some of it.

    Coming to this order has been a long, methodical process involving a working group that broke the scoring into four categories:

    • Matchday experience — including seat views, community feel, accessibility and amenities inside and near the stadium (40 per cent of the final total)
    • Match atmosphere — with consideration for home and away supporters (25 per cent)
    • Transport and location — how easy it is to get to and from the stadium (20 per cent)
    • Aesthetics — such as design, character, surroundings, history and other intangibles (15 per cent)

    The panel was asked to submit marks out of 10 for each stadium in each category, which were then averaged and weighted as above — giving an objective final ranking.

    There are complexities to each category. A ground’s atmosphere can depend on the form of a team, the status of the opposition and whether the floodlights are on.

    Equally, your matchday experience can be influenced by how safe you feel or how swiftly stewards deal with an abusive or racist supporter nearby.

    As for the aesthetics, stadium architectural historian Simon Inglis said most grounds “are simply an agglomeration of decisions made by different directors over different eras in different circumstances. I hold my hand up to extolling a shambles over a masterplan and prefer asymmetry and quirky angles to a uniform bowl, but I also appreciate that a uniform bowl will almost always be functionally superior”.

    Our working panel and consultation included Inglis, our own writers, which includes a broad cross-section of match-going supporters, and guidance from the Football Supporters’ Association.

    20. Vitality Stadium

    Team: Bournemouth

    Capacity: 11,307

    First used: 1910

    The main stand at what was originally named Dean Court carries the Bournemouth crest and below it, a slogan: “Together, anything is possible”. Few things could be more apt. Completely rebuilt in 2001, the stadium finally got its fourth stand in 2013 after the club survived administration. Since then, it has become a regular Premier League feature.

    Best bits: There is a neatness and conformity to the Vitality Stadium. The compact stands are close to the action and provide uninterrupted views and the whole ground does not try to be something it isn’t. Instead it is humble, which may explain its presence at the bottom of this list, but some will also view that as its charm.

    Where it falls short: There’s little discernible character. The support is welcoming but everything feels a bit temporary, like the real ground will be built at some point in the future. The images of past glories on the side of each stand are a nice feature but struggle to inspire.

    What I love about the place: “It is a cobbled-together ground and wouldn’t look out of place in the lower rungs of the EFL, with the club’s training complex adjacent to the Ted MacDougall Stand. That part of the ground remains a temporary building, put up quickly when Bournemouth were promoted to the Championship. The stadium is situated in a leafy part of Dorset and near a dog-walking route that cuts between the ground and Bournemouth’s compact training facility. The charm of the ground has contributed to them punching above their weight.” – Jacob Tanswell, football writer

    Verdict: If you are in the area and a game is on (with tickets available), then you should catch it, but no one is going to shame you if there are other grounds higher on your list.

    19. Kenilworth Road

    Team: Luton Town

    Capacity: 11,050

    First used: 1905

    Luton’s home for more than 100 years was one of the stories of the summer following the club’s promotion. Kenilworth Road, which last hosted the top flight in 1992, is like a football museum. A working example of how football grounds first established themselves with mostly wooden, low-roofed, shallow terraces that have since seen seats installed. Those stands sit alongside a new, temporary Bobbers Stand that enables the ground to fulfil its Premier League obligations. The Oak Stand entrance through nearby houses is now known globally. The ground’s days are numbered, with Luton set to build a new purpose-built stadium across town.

    go-deeper

    Best bits: There is nothing like the cauldron of noise that can be generated in a ground like Kenilworth Road. Everything feels so close. The sound consumes. It may be well short of the stature enjoyed by most Premier League venues, yet you won’t hear an atmosphere like it. The walk into the away end through neighbouring terraced housing really is fun, too.

    Where it falls short: There is limited legroom, posts galore and a roof that is likely to obscure your view. Accessibility was also considered poor, although improvements have since been introduced as part of the recent redevelopment.

    What I love about the place: “All its peculiarities and rough edges embody the Luton story and how far we have come. Each stand has a unique character. Draped flags lionise club greats and protest past wrongs inflicted on the club by over-zealous authorities. The re-jigged Bobbers Stand is just the latest example of the club being dragged kicking and screaming into the next phase of modern football.

    “But the individual stories and who you go with (parents, grandparents, partners, children) are what make it so personal. Your first game (Preston North End). Your worst game (Kettering Town). Your best game (Sunderland). They are the memories. Eventually, we will move into a nice-looking new stadium, which will bring financial security and less mockery from opposition fans. It will probably look lovely on TV, but it won’t be home. Not for a long time.” – Alex Brodie, content editor (and Luton fan)

    Verdict: Get there and soak up a rare atmosphere while you still can. Just don’t expect comfortable surroundings.

    18. Selhurst Park

    Team: Crystal Palace

    Capacity: 25,486

    First used: 1924

    One of the venues for the 1948 Summer Olympics, Selhurst Park is a traditional ground that has preserved its character while picking up enough updates. The newest part of the ground is the striking Holmesdale Road Stand, completed in 1994. You may well recognise the stadium as Nelson Road, the fictional home of AFC Richmond in Ted Lasso. Plans for a £150million ($185m) redevelopment of Selhurst Park are in place, with most of the formal barriers now cleared.

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    Best bits: Palace take pride in their home atmosphere. The Holmesdale Fanatics lead by example with flags and chants throughout the 90 minutes. The soul at Selhurst Park is viewed among the best in the country and there is a community warmth around the place that can be hard to find at other clubs in London.

    Where it falls short: Parking is a struggle. There will also be obstructions to your view — especially in the away end — and accessibility is poor in places.

    What I love about the place: “Selhurst Park is not the most glamorous stadium, but it has character and history. Next year will mark its centenary, just as work to replace the Main Stand is hoped to start. Combine that with an atmosphere often hailed as the envy of other Premier League clubs and there is something special about it. Just don’t try to drive there.” — Matt Woosnam, Crystal Palace correspondent

    Verdict: Selhurst Park is definitely a matchday atmosphere to savour and a classic ground to take in, whether you want to see Roy Hodgson or imagine Ted Lasso watching on from the dugout.

    17. Turf Moor

    Team: Burnley

    Capacity: 21,744

    First used: 1883

    Home to Burnley for 140 years and counting, Turf Moor is one of the world’s oldest football stadiums. Only Preston’s Deepdale has enjoyed longer unbroken service than Turf Moor and recent investment has raised the standards of the facilities after a few too many years of neglect.

    Best bits: Burnley is a proper football town and it feels like it. The stadium regularly averages crowds over 20,000 in a town with a population of little more than 90,000, making it one of the best-supported clubs per capita in England. There’s the tidier look, new video screens, painted wooden seats and a lovely backdrop of rolling hills. You may even get to catch some action at the neighbouring Burnley Cricket Club, which backs onto one of the stands.

    Where it falls short: All places get cold, but Turf Moor can feel particularly chilly. You may or may not get a good view of the pitch and two of the stands could do with the same renovation treatment as their opposite ends.

    What I love about the place: “There is a charm to Turf Moor that gives it an authentic old-school football feel. It has character, history, tradition, compact concourses and now digital advertising boards. The one feature that marks it out is the view. Sit in the press box at the top of the North Stand and admire the old mill town and surrounding area. A thing of beauty you never tire of and when the visiting team’s correspondent arrives, you can guarantee they will point it out. Combine that with ‘Kompanyball’ at its best and the atmosphere it can generate… quality.” – Andy Jones, Burnley correspondent

    Oliver Kay says: “I cannot understand how it’s so low. A functional stadium rather than an attractive one, but it has an old-world charm, slightly more rugged than Craven Cottage. I suspect a north-south divide here. That view from the top of the Bob Lord Stand of the chimneys and hills beyond is something to savour. And there aren’t many better away ends.”

    Verdict: Take a coat and enjoy one of English football’s oldest venues that still carries plenty of charm.

    16. The American Express Stadium

    Team: Brighton & Hove Albion

    Capacity: 31,876

    First used: 2011

    Situated in Falmer on the outskirts of Brighton, the Amex is not so much the home of a club as the sign of its rebirth. Brighton had been homeless for 16 years after the board of directors voted to sell the club’s previous Goldstone Ground home to developers without arranging a replacement. The club fought through the peril and earned Premier League football within six years of moving to its impressive, £93million home.

    Best bits: Your matchday ticket also acts as a voucher for free travel. The facilities for supporters include padded seats and ample legroom. The design is appealing and there is even the charm of depicting white seagulls among the sea of blue seats. The stadium’s accessibility has been awarded the gold standard centre of excellence by charity and stadium auditors Level Playing Field.

    Where it falls short: It just doesn’t feel or look right to have such small seating areas behind each goal. This is where supporters suck the ball into the net, don’t they know? Although transport is free, the remote location of the ground means there are no real alternatives when it fails. There are also limited refreshment options beyond the club facilities, which tend to be more expensive and don’t provide shelter from the weather.

    What I love about the place: “The Amex is neat, well-equipped and fit for purpose. A near-32,000-seater stadium set in a bowl on the eastern outskirts of the city. Above all, it symbolises the spirit of the club and its supporters. Together they fought back from two years of ground sharing with Gillingham 75 miles away and 12 years at Withdean, a converted athletics track that was supposed to be a temporary home back in the city before a drawn-out saga for permission to build the Amex. A facelift after 12 years has given the stadium a fresh feel for the club’s first season in Europe.” – Andy Naylor, Brighton correspondent

    Verdict: Brighton are on to a good thing; their stadium sums up perfectly where they have come from and who they now aspire to be.

    15. Craven Cottage

    Team: Fulham

    Capacity: 24,500

    First used: 1896

    Craven Cottage’s history of hosting Fulham dates back more than 125 years and it represents one of the more idiosyncratic stadiums in England. It is named after a cottage built by William Craven in 1780, which still stands in one corner of the ground. The ornate frontage of the historic Johnny Haynes Stand — the oldest remaining stand in English professional football — runs along the length of the ground. Now standing opposite it is the redeveloped Riverside Stand.

    Best bits: There is a lot to like and experience when visiting Craven Cottage. The walk from Putney Bridge along the bank of the River Thames is one of the most enjoyable journeys to an English ground.

    Where it falls short: Tickets are not cheap. Fulham supporters already feel like they have been asked to bear the brunt of the cost of that new Riverside Stand through higher ticket prices.

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    What I love about the place: “The walk to Craven Cottage sets it apart. A rite of passage. Across the bridge, through Bishops Park, along the rows of terraced houses and then, somehow, a football ground hidden behind a listed brick facade attached to the cottage itself, tucked away in the corner. There is no football stadium like it, especially now it combines the modernity of the new Riverside Stand with the tradition and history of the wooden seats opposite. But it’s the stroll on a sunny day that makes it unique. It’s why travelling supporters enjoy it and why Fulham fans have fought so hard to make sure developers could never touch it.” — Peter Rutzler, Fulham correspondent

    Verdict: There will be bigger, louder and more intense places to visit, but few are as warm and picturesque as Craven Cottage.

    14. Goodison Park

    Team: Everton

    Capacity: 39,414

    First used: 1892

    Goodison is iconic. No stadium has hosted more games of English top-flight football. It was the first purpose-built stadium in England when it opened and the first to introduce dugouts for managers. Everton were also the first club to have a church attached to its stadium: the cosy St Luke’s serves tea, toast and memorabilia to match-goers before games. A new stadium on Bramley-Moore Dock is set to replace Goodison during next season, with the old stadium redeveloped for homes and commercial use.

    Best bits: Goodison Park is football vintage. It holds in noise to guttural levels and provides an experience far closer and more stirring than others. Designed by Archibald Leitch, also look out for the criss-cross balustrades that underpin its architectural design and underline the ground’s enduring charm.

    Where it falls short: There is no avoiding the pillars obstructing your view. It is the Premier League stadium with the highest percentage of restricted-view seats. There is little room for supporter facilities other grounds can offer, or much legroom.

    What I love about the place: “If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then Everton’s imminent farewell to Goodison Park is already intensifying emotions among supporters. The Old Lady may be a pensioner among the top flight’s other modern super stadia, but it is a venerable old dear, bursting with history, tradition and memories to go with the fraying paint and obstructed views. Wedged into terraced streets on three sides, those matchday smells of chippies, beer and police horse muck are — like the ground itself — lingering reminders of a bygone age.” — Greg O’Keeffe, football writer

    Oliver Kay says: “By goodness, it has seen better days. It’s a relic now, a symbol of a club that has regrettably been left behind in the Premier League and its days are numbered. Everything about the place — the noise and smells as you walk down Goodison Road, the peeling paint in the concourses and stairwells, the appalling lack of legroom — feels like stepping back in time. And in the age of homogenised, identikit new stadiums, it is all the more appealing for that. Everton have to move on, but it will be a sad, sad day when they leave.”

    Verdict: The beloved ground will not be around for much longer and is worth a visit for that reason alone. It will be missed once it’s gone.

    13. Bramall Lane

    Team: Sheffield United

    Capacity: 32,050

    First used: 1855

    Bramall Lane is the oldest football stadium in the world still hosting matches. The four stands cling to the sides of the pitch and loom over the action — and that is despite being originally built to host cricket. It sits near the city centre, yet is a significant distance from the Hillsborough home of rivals Sheffield Wednesday. Steeped in history and character, it has its quirks but also comes across as pretty well-kept. The South Stand’s wooden seats were only removed in 2005.

    Best bits: There can be few more intimidating atmospheres in English football than the one generated inside Bramall Lane. The noise lingers and swells as if stuck under the roof and the authenticity of the place means it feels like little has substantially changed through the years. It is the stadium that defines what a “difficult place to go” looks like and being on the right side of that is always more fun.

    Where it falls short: Being on the opposite side of that atmosphere is not as enjoyable and the home support can make things intimidating for away supporters when the mood turns. Views can be interrupted by pillars and there is little to get excited about around the stadium itself. Accessibility across the stadium is limited and there is also the depressing sight of the stadium’s hotel, which has stood unused since 2020.

    What I love about the place: “In many ways, Bramall Lane is a throwback to the days before dozens of new stadiums came along looking exactly like the one before — other than the colour of the seats. And that’s a good thing. On a night, the atmosphere positively fizzes. The lack of fans in 2020-21 due to the Covid-19 pandemic goes a long way to explaining why Chris Wilder’s United tanked so horribly in their second Premier League season.” — Richard Sutcliffe, football writer

    Verdict: The sort of place the Premier League misses when it’s not there, a piece of history that continues to stand the test of time and home to one of the most vociferous atmospheres across English football.

    12. The City Ground

    Team: Nottingham Forest

    Capacity: 30,404

    First used: 1898

    All but the first 14 years of Forest’s existence have been at The City Ground. The stadium sits on the bank of the River Trent and there have been plans since 2019 to redevelop the Peter Taylor Stand. They were granted planning permission last year, although the stadium’s proximity to the river may complicate matters.

    Best bits: The stadium is in a beautiful spot at the heart of Nottingham, with the river a welcome neighbour. Trent Bridge crosses the river and is a hive of activity on a matchday. Then, inside the ground, the belting anthem of Mull of Kintyre sung just before kick-off is an iconic sound in English football, taking the entire ground right back to their English title and European successes of the late 1970s. The home atmosphere has been rejuvenated in recent seasons.

    Where it falls short: The City Ground has character but little comfort. The PA system volume can be erratic and there is a chance you will have a post obstructing your view. It has also ranked as one of the more limited Premier League grounds for accessibility.

    What I love about the place: “The City Ground has always been special, but it is the people, as much as the place, that has made it Forest’s biggest asset in recent years. Steve Cooper’s fist pumps, the spectacular Forza Garibaldi banners, Brennan Johnson, Ryan Yates and Joe Worrall helping fire their club to success. The deafening, almost physical wall of noise helped drive Forest into the Premier League and helped keep them there. For so long, it was a museum, a place of history. Now there is excitement for the future.” — Paul Taylor, Forest correspondent

    Verdict: There is little new and shiny about the place, just a powerful atmosphere and a deeply ingrained history.

    11. Etihad Stadium

    Team: Manchester City

    Capacity: 53,400

    First used: 2003

    Originally built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the City of Manchester Stadium was converted into a purpose-built football stadium at a cost of £40million. That conversion means it feels much more like a football venue than the London Stadium. In 2003, Manchester City moved in and, following the club’s takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008, the stadium sits in one of the most impressive football sites in Europe, with the Etihad Campus just across the road. The stadium design maximises sunlight and ventilation for the playing surface, which is regarded as one of the best in England. Expansion of the South Stand was completed in 2015 and there are plans for further redevelopment of the stadium over the coming three years.

    Best bits: It is akin to visiting a football theme park, with restaurants, stages for bands and activities for supporters spread around the site. Inside, the stadium carries an aura given City have set about winning every trophy going. With Jack Grealish, Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne on the pitch, you know a seat guarantees the very best in action, alongside all the facilities and connectivity of a state-of-the-art stadium, which was lso awarded Level Playing Field’s centre of excellence award for accessibility.

    Where it falls short: It is hard not to visit the Etihad and think about Maine Road. The club’s spiritual home saw a constant rollercoaster and delivered one of the great atmospheres in English football. The Etihad is many things but may never have that final piece of intangible soul that sits in the old stands. Away supporters being housed over three tiers does little to help the atmosphere.

    What I love about the place: “You’d have to say the Etihad is one of the toughest grounds to go to in top-level European football these days. Pep Guardiola’s team is a large reason for that, but the fans can generate an atmosphere for the biggest games that seems to give the players an extra push. Just ask Real Madrid. As for the physical building, it’s one that’s always evolving. The curious mixture of sky blue and concrete grey will look very modern once the North Stand redevelopment is concluded and the new live music venue next door is up and running.” — Sam Lee, Manchester City correspondent

    Verdict: Unfairly nicknamed ‘Emptyhad’ by rivals, the Etihad gets a harder rap than it deserves. Given the team’s trophy haul and the high-quality fan experience, we all know who is having the last laugh.

    10. London Stadium

    Team: West Ham United

    Capacity: 62,500

    First used: 2016

    London’s Olympic Stadium underwent a three-year, £274million renovation after controversially being handed to West Ham. The club was awarded a 99-year lease and pays an annual rent of £2.5million. The stadium is still used for other sports. UK Athletics has annual use and Major League Baseball games have also been hosted.

    Best bits: Set in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London Stadium has expansive surroundings and the genuine feel of a big, international venue. There is plenty of space, excellent facilities and a good atmosphere outside the stadium on a matchday.

    Where it falls short: The elephant in the room is the number of elephants you can fit into the stadium. The pitch feels distant and so does everyone else in the stadium. These are problems you will find in any football ground that also features an athletics track. Had Tottenham Hotspur’s bid to take over the site been successful, they would have knocked the stadium down and rebuilt it. Anyone who attended ‘Super Saturday’ in August 2012, when the British Olympic team won three gold medals inside the stadium, would vouch for the noise and atmosphere that can be created inside, but as hard as West Ham try, the experience of the London Stadium struggles to match the spectacle.

    What I love about the place: “It will never truly feel home to West Ham supporters due to their strong connection to the Boleyn Ground, but the electric atmosphere on European nights at the London Stadium is special. There have been so many memorable moments, from Andriy Yarmolenko’s winner in the last-16 Europa League tie against Sevilla to Michail Antonio’s goal in the Europa Conference League semi-final first-leg victory over AZ Alkmaar. Those moments make the place come alive.” — Roshane Thomas, West Ham correspondent

    Verdict: There are issues — it can offer one of the least engaging atmospheres in England’s top flight – but the amenities, facilities and experience of visiting an impressive venue in part make up for that.

    9. Stamford Bridge

    Team: Chelsea

    Capacity: 40,173

    First used: 1877

    Chelsea are one of only a few clubs to play at the same stadium since they were formed, but there is something utterly unrecognisable from the ground Chelsea were playing at just 30 years ago. Redevelopment of the stands, the removal of the greyhound racing track and the building of all manner of hotels and restaurants means the stadium itself is almost hidden inside the hodgepodge of buildings that make up Chelsea Village. Expanding the stadium or moving away have proven equally problematic.

    Best bits: There are few stadiums of the size of Stamford Bridge that make everything feel so close to the pitch, probably because it would now be almost impossible to design it alongside the required space and amenities. Still, that closeness creates an authentic feel inside the stadium despite its exclusive west London setting and opulent exterior.

    Where it falls short: There really is little to get excited about as you approach the ground. No view. No teasing floodlights. It just looks like you’re visiting a hotel shopping complex. Quite frankly, a club with Chelsea’s aspirations needs a bigger stadium and a future away from Stamford Bridge has been discussed. This is another stadium in a prime location where transport links can buckle on a matchday.

    What I love about the place: “As each year goes by, Chelsea’s ground shows more signs of age and is overtaken in size and facilities by new, shinier versions built by rivals… but there is no other place Chelsea fans would rather be. Stamford Bridge is unique: the supporters, courtesy of Chelsea Pitch Owners, actually own the freehold to the ground. The club cannot move sites and keep the name Chelsea without getting enough votes from the CPO first.

    “A club mocked for a lack of history are still at their traditional home. The team’s deteriorating form has dampened the atmosphere, but a blast of One Step Beyond by Madness after a big win gets people dancing in the stands like nowhere else.” — Simon Johnson, Chelsea correspondent

    Verdict: Given Chelsea’s journey over the past 30 years, this may be one club that needs to move if it is to maximise its future, but Stamford Bridge remains an archetypal stop on any tour.

    8. Gtech Community Stadium

    Team: Brentford

    Capacity: 17,250

    First used: 2020

    Having enjoyed the compact home comforts of Griffin Park and a public house on each corner since 1904, Brentford’s switch to their £71million new home was quite the departure. Plans had been in the works for almost two decades, but the new stadium finally arrived in time for the remarkable rise to the Premier League.

    Best bits: The stadium is cleverly designed to fit into a triangle of land just off the M4. Space and comfort are all here and it is compact enough for the stands to feel attached to the action. Transport links are good and there is a community feel about the place.

    Where it falls short: The design is fun but unlikely to persuade you to visit. The transport links are good but you could be forgiven for using a map and compass to find your way there on foot or by car.

    What I love about the place: “It is one of the smallest grounds in the top two divisions but none of that detracts from its charm. Brentford’s home is close to the Thames and there is nothing better than stopping for a drink at one of the riverside pubs before watching Thomas Frank’s side take on one of the ‘Big Six’ on a roasting summer’s day. Just ask Manchester United fans.” — Jay Harris, Brentford correspondent

    Verdict: A proud home for Brentford, a mark of how far the club has come and a comfortable and enjoyable venue for football.

    7. Villa Park

    Team: Aston Villa

    Capacity: 42,530

    First used: 1897

    It is far from the biggest ground, yet there is something classically ornate and reliable about Villa Park. Villa’s home for well over a century, in the days before the new Wembley Stadium, Villa Park was used for more FA Cup semi-finals than any other ground. Significant redevelopment of the North Stand is on its way.

    Best bits: A proper ground full of tradition and character, the Holte End especially. It is as good to look at from the outside as it is to experience from the inside, especially on a good day. When Villa Park rocks, the whole of Birmingham shakes.

    Where it falls short: At times, Villa’s long and prestigious history has weighed heavy and when things are not going well, Villa Park can be quiet and unassuming. The ground comes with accessibility issues and has areas primed for redevelopment by its owners.

    What I love about the place: “A packed-out Villa Park, when in full voice, is a special place to be. The Holte End towers over the pitch and creates a wonderful, unique atmosphere. When it gets going there is no place quite like it and it’s little surprise more than 30,000 people are on the waiting list for a season ticket. While there are issues around the ground with public transport and the North Stand looks a little dated, its traditional charm is still warming. When cup semi-finals were held here, visiting supporters loved it just as much as the locals.” — Gregg Evans, football writer

    Oliver Kay says: “The tragedy of Villa Park is they demolished the old Trinity Road Stand, which was a thing of beauty. Of all the famous stands lost in the rush to modernise during the 1990s and 2000s, there were few more striking. Thank goodness they preserved the Holte End with its imposing red-brick exterior. Is there a more handsome stand in English football? And the upcoming redevelopment of the North Stand will enhance the old-meets-new feel of a stadium that is widely recognised among the best in the Premier League.”

    Verdict: Getting to Villa Park for a big game to watch an in-form Villa can be as good and authentic as it gets.

    6. Molineux

    Team: Wolverhampton Wanderers

    Capacity: 31,750

    First used: 1889

    Molineux has been home to Wolves for more than 130 years. It was the first stadium built for use by a Football League club and among the first to have floodlights installed and host European club games. Its name originates from Benjamin Molineux, who purchased the land during the 18th century. The modern stadium was built following Sir Jack Hayward’s takeover of the club in 1990 after serious financial issues. A new two-tier Stan Cullis Stand was opened in 2012.

    Best bits: Whatever Wolves’ issues with identity on the pitch, their Molineux home is truly distinctive, with warm, inviting architecture. It is a short walk from the city centre, the facilities are modern and the atmosphere is raucous. A quick walk around the ground is worth the effort, showing off how the stadium is cut into the land. Hopefully, you will also clock the statue of Wolves legend Billy Wright.

    Where it falls short: The home support can be intimidating and it may not be the best place to walk around on your own in your away shirt. It is another ground with limited parking nearby, too. There are a lot of pubs nearby but few allow away supporters inside.

    What I love about the place: “Let’s talk about the statues. The figures of Stan Cullis and Billy Wright, in particular, are among the best footballing tributes you will find anywhere. Let’s talk about the pre-match music. Hi Ho Silver Lining, obviously, but Kashmir is even better. When you have Robert Plant around, why not? Then there’s the location; a short stroll from the station and city-centre pubs, not stuck out of town on a retail park. It needs sprucing up in places but so do a few cathedrals, which is what Molineux is; a footballing cathedral at the centre of its community.” — Steve Madeley, Wolves correspondent

    Oliver Kay says: “Molineux is a gem, but that wasn’t always the case. When I first went in 1982, it was a dump with an inexplicable 20-yard gap between the pitch and one of the stands. Even to my young eyes, it was a total eyesore. But I love it now. The design is slightly eccentric but it works, as does the old-gold colour scheme. Inside, particularly around the media suite and the executive boxes, the club’s proud history is rightly flaunted. And it’s a five-minute walk from the city centre. Seriously, what’s not to like?”

    Verdict: Molineux has a perfect balance of modern facilities and an authentic atmosphere to rival anywhere in the country.

    5. Anfield

    Team: Liverpool

    Capacity: 61,276

    First used: 1884

    Apart from its first seven years when it was home to Everton, Anfield has served Liverpool from its perch on the edge of Stanley Park. It has continually evolved, adding tributes to legendary figures and more recently adding extra seats. That has seen off the need to move away from the club’s much-loved home. Now Anfield sits high above the trees and dominates the view as much as it does the lives of the city’s red-hearted residents.

    Best bits: There is a poignancy in finding a moment to reflect at the ground’s Hillsborough memorial, while watching and listening to the entire ground sing You’ll Never Walk Alone before kick-off is one of football’s special experiences. Anfield can take you on a wild ride you may not want to end.

    Where it falls short: The stadium has felt in a state of redevelopment for a few years and issues with the Buckingham Group, which was overseeing the rebuild of the Anfield Road end, have prolonged that perception. Once completed, Anfield will feel like it has been given another fresh lease of life. That is also likely to make matchday road congestion significantly worse.

    What I love about the place: “I’ll never forget the first time I walked up those red steps and gazed out at the sheer beauty of Anfield. October 27, 1990. Liverpool 2 Chelsea 0. There was no place like it as a wide-eyed 12-year-old and it’s still unsurpassed more than three decades later. The towering Kop, the noise, the flags and that unique ability to inspire and intimidate players in equal measure. Nowhere is capable of producing miracles like Anfield. Don’t take my word for it, this is what Pep Guardiola thinks: “The motto ‘This is Anfield’ is no marketing spin.” — James Pearce, Liverpool correspondent

    Oliver Kay says: “I get why people feel it is over-mythologised. The ‘famous European night’ cliche must sound pretty trite for opposition fans whose only experience of Anfield is a run-of-the-mill Premier League game on one of those Saturday afternoons when the Kop seems to be nursing a collective hangover. But I don’t think my ears have ever recovered from the semi-final second legs against Chelsea in 2005 and Barcelona in 2019. On nights like that, the place seems to take on a life of its own. One of the best things Fenway Sports Group did was scrap the previous owners’ plans for a new stadium.

    “From certain vantage points, it is almost unrecognisable, but when the Anfield atmosphere is at its most raucous, it is unmistakable — possibly unrivalled.”

    Verdict: A bucket-list item for any Liverpool fan and probably any fan of football.

    4. Emirates Stadium

    Team: Arsenal

    Capacity: 60,704

    First used: 2006

    Replacing the iconic surrounds of Highbury, the Emirates is now in its 18th season as Arsenal’s home. It cost £390million to build, which was funded solely by the club. Arsenal are yet to win a league title since it was opened — but are closer than ever.

    Best bits: Supporter facilities are excellent. Arsenal’s on-pitch performances have improved the atmosphere, too. One thing you do sense walking up to the Emirates is its ‘Arsenalisation’. Since 2009, supporters have helped bring club history and soul with murals and imagery. The stadium’s accessibility has also been awarded the gold standard centre of excellence by Level Playing Field.

    Where it falls short: At times under Arsene Wenger, it felt like the Emirates hampered Arsenal’s ability to improve on the pitch. Maybe that was unfair, but it made for an often unhappy stadium to visit. That feeling has eased in recent seasons, unlike the cost of refreshments. There are London Underground stations nearby but that proximity can also cause major congestion outside.

    What I love about the place: “Arsenal’s relationship with the Emirates is a funny one. It will always be held up against Highbury and for its first 15 years, it paled in comparison. Recently, however, the supporters have made it feel more like home. The atmosphere has improved since the return of crowds in 2021 and everybody seems to be benefiting. Memories are being created and additions outside the stadium, including Wenger’s statue and new artwork, have also solidified the connection between the club and its people.” – Art de Roche, Arsenal correspondent

    Verdict: The Emirates has its critics but it now delivers the atmosphere, facilities, accessibility and product any sports fan would expect from the Premier League.

    3. Old Trafford

    Team: Manchester United

    Capacity: 74,031

    First used: 1910

    The embodiment of Manchester United’s original Premier League success. The stadium ballooned to its current size — the third largest in the United Kingdom and 14th in Europe — due in part to their domination of the division. Redevelopments ceased in 2006 and Old Trafford is in need of renovation simply to return to its previous standards.

    Best bits: The scale of the place is mighty and it comes with a special atmosphere. Most views inside the stadium are excellent and outside, United’s rich history is embraced by statues of Sir Matt Busby, three of their 1968 European Cup winners (Sir Bobby Charlton, George Best and Denis Law), and a clock and plaque to remember the victims of the Munich air disaster.

    Where it falls short: There are clear issues — parts look out of date, roofs leak following heavy rain and a lack of commercial areas is hitting revenue. Not all of that is a supporters’ concern, but it will form United’s opinion on whether to renovate or relocate. Surprisingly, there are some areas of restricted view and most of the stadium provides legroom that even those below average height might find a squeeze.

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    What I love about the place: “Redeveloping Old Trafford is essential. The last major upgrades were signed off before the Glazers took control. Despite this, the stadium itself remains one of huge character and history. Appearing on the Manchester horizon, its structure is distinctive and striking. Once inside, the proximity of the seats to each other and the pitch generates a crackling atmosphere.” — Laurie Whitwell, Manchester United correspondent

    Oliver Kay says: “People were always a bit grudging about Old Trafford when it was in its pomp in the 2000s. A bit too shiny and perfect for traditional tastes. Stereotypes about daytrippers and corporate fans in executive boxes eating “their prawn sandwiches”, as Roy Keane famously put it. It was always a brilliant stadium though and it still is. It was so extensively modernised in the 1990s that it didn’t look, feel or smell as historic as Anfield, Goodison Park or Highbury. But it feels historic now. That’s one upside of neglect. The upside of a difficult decade on the pitch is a more raw, visceral atmosphere than commonly portrayed.”

    Verdict: Old Trafford is a temple of English football and for as long as it is standing, it will be worth a visit.

    2. St James’ Park

    Team: Newcastle United

    Capacity: 52,257

    First used: 1892

    The long-term home of Newcastle United, St James’ Park sits on a hill at the centre of the city. It is as if everything is drawn to the beacon that protrudes the skyline. The ground is lopsided given the vast redevelopment of two stands in 1998 and it can look architecturally cold and clinical, but it provides an atmosphere as authentic as any in the Premier League.

    Best bits: That big-game aura and the fact you can see the ground from so many points in the city establishes its sense of importance. The stadium is equally impressive inside. It is one of the more respectful welcomes travelling supporters will receive, especially if you return the respect. You can do that by visiting three of the statues outside the stadium that mark the legendary contributions of Alan Shearer, Bobby Robson and Jackie Milburn.

    Where it falls short: Away fans are put in a top tier as far away as possible from the action, which is unfair to those who make the trip and in conflict with rules that suggest away fans should be pitchside.

    What I love about the place: “I can’t believe there’s a better atmosphere anywhere than St James’ Park right now: paint-peeling noise, the sensory overload of Wor Flags and, after so much division, everybody in it together. What makes the stadium so special is its location, slap-bang in the middle of the city, looming over it, setting the mood and once again drawing people towards it.” – George Caulkin, senior writer (based in Newcastle)

    go-deeper

    Verdict: The pride in Newcastle runs deep. Hence some of our north-east contingent questioning why St James’ Park isn’t top. It is one of the country’s proper football cathedrals and a fantastic place to watch a game.

    1. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

    Team: Tottenham Hotspur

    Capacity: 62,850

    First used: 2019

    The basics: London’s biggest club stadium was built on the spot of Spurs’ previous home for 118 years, White Hart Lane. A £1billion project to redevelop the north London site replaced one traditional football venue with a stunning, modern sibling. It was also built to become a London home for the NFL and includes a retractable gridiron.

    Best bits: The little details that point out the geographical relevance to White Hart Lane, such as a white circle on the floor that marks the previous centre spot. Then there is the 17,500-capacity South Stand. Despite being a bowl, the raking, double-tier stand draws attention, creates atmosphere and provides the perfect canvas for a supporter mosaic.

    Where it falls short: Modern can mean clinical and, at times, walking through the concourses you would be forgiven for thinking you were in an airport. Expensive stadiums often lead to expensive experiences and most Spurs supporters would lead their gripes with the cost of their matchday. Transport links on matchday can get clogged.

    What I love about the place: “Spurs’ on-pitch performances may not have been the envy of Europe over recent years, but nobody could fail to be impressed by their stadium. It increased the capacity from 36,000, gave fans more spacious concourses, incredible pitch views from every position and, famously, pints that magically fill from the bottom. It hasn’t been an entirely positive transition — there has been little improvement to transport infrastructure and ticket prices are ludicrous – but there can be little doubt Spurs’ new home is the best in the Premier League.” – James Maw, editor and regular on The View from the Lane podcast

    Verdict: Perhaps this is a victory for modern, commercialised football over the more organic qualities of its past. Still, sit inside the stadium and you soon realise its draw: an experience comparable to any live stadium sport across the world.

    Full stadium scoring and rankings

    Ranking Stadium Atmosphere score Atmosphere ranking Experience score Experience ranking Transport/location score Transport/location ranking Design/aesthetics score Design/aesthetics ranking

    1

    Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

    7

    9

    8.4

    1

    6.6

    11

    8.7

    1

    2

    St James’ Park

    7.4

    4

    7.6

    2

    8.1

    1

    7.9

    3

    3

    Old Trafford

    7.3

    5

    7.3

    3

    7.1

    3

    7.4

    6

    4

    Emirates Stadium

    6.7

    12

    7.3

    3

    7.7

    2

    7.6

    5

    5

    Anfield

    7.7

    1

    7.1

    5

    5.7

    13

    8.1

    2

    6

    Molineux

    7

    9

    7

    6

    7.1

    3

    7.4

    6

    7

    Villa Park

    7.2

    6

    6.5

    10

    5.7

    15

    7.2

    8

    8

    Gtech Community Stadium

    5.9

    15

    7

    6

    6.7

    9

    6.3

    13

    9

    Stamford Bridge

    6.1

    13

    6.4

    12

    7.1

    3

    6.6

    10

    10

    London Stadium

    5.8

    16

    6.5

    10

    7

    6

    6.5

    11

    11

    Etihad

    6

    14

    6.6

    8

    6.7

    9

    6.3

    13

    12

    City Ground

    6.8

    11

    5.8

    14

    6.8

    8

    5.8

    17

    13

    Bramall Lane

    7.2

    6

    5.7

    15

    6.3

    12

    6.2

    15

    14

    Goodison Park

    7.7

    1

    5

    18

    5.7

    13

    6.9

    9

    15

    Craven Cottage

    4.7

    18

    5.9

    13

    7

    6

    7.9

    3

    16

    Amex Stadium

    4.6

    19

    6.6

    8

    5.1

    19

    6.4

    12

    17

    Turf Moor

    5.8

    16

    5.7

    15

    5.5

    17

    6.2

    15

    18

    Selhurst Park

    7.5

    3

    4.3

    19

    5

    20

    4.3

    19

    19

    Kenilworth Road

    7.1

    8

    3.8

    20

    5.7

    15

    5

    18

    20

    Vitality Stadium

    4

    20

    5.3

    17

    5.3

    18

    4.3

    19

    (Top photo: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)

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  • Does Ratcliffe’s proposed investment in United represent enough change?

    Does Ratcliffe’s proposed investment in United represent enough change?

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    There are two explanations for why Sir Jim Ratcliffe named his petrochemicals company INEOS.

    The first is the practical: the company he was taking over in 1998 was previously called INspec Ethylene Oxide and Specialities, a bit of a mouthful, so the acronym made sense.

    The second is a little more romantic: faced with this slightly clunky acronym and the need to provide a new company name with an acquisition deadline looming, Ratcliffe and his sons were thumbing through Latin and Greek dictionaries in search of something more resonant when they learned that “ineo” was Latin for entering something new and “neos” was Latin for something new or innovative. INEOS, they therefore concluded, would mean the dawn of something new and innovative.

    In his ideal world, Ratcliffe would be declaring a new dawn for Manchester United having finally made a breakthrough after more than 12 months exploring the possibility of buying his hometown club from the Glazer family.

    But can it really be a new dawn if a United board meeting this Thursday ends with the Glazers agreeing to sell a 25 per cent stake in the club? It would certainly be an innovative compromise on both sides, but the new dawn the club’s supporters and, indeed, staff crave? For as long as the Glazers retain overall control, surely not.

    GO DEEPER

    Manchester United takeover: The 12 who will decide on Ratcliffe bid and the voting rules

    It is a breakthrough of sorts, theoretically a long overdue first step towards the departure that the Glazers appeared to herald last November with their announcement of a “process to explore strategic alternatives for the club”.

    A minority investment was among the options floated at that point, but it was not the one the supporters or Ratcliffe and INEOS hoped for.

    Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, the other leading bidder, was not prepared to compromise by settling for a minority stake. His representatives declared on Saturday night he was walking away from the process, infuriated by the Glazers’ refusal to accept his reported £5billion ($6.08bn) bid for the club.

    Frustration with the Glazers is a familiar story. It remains to be seen if or how that will change with this new development. Even if INEOS take control of United’s sporting operation — and do so with considerably more success than their mixed experiences in football with Nice in France and Lausanne-Sport in Switzerland — it is far from clear whether this is truly the first step towards a full-scale takeover.

    The Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST) responded to this weekend’s developments by releasing a list of 11 questions, asking where these shares are coming from; which of the Glazers will remain shareholders after this transaction; what plans have been made for investment in infrastructure (for example the stadium); and whether there is now a clear path to a change of majority ownership.

    Former United defender Gary Neville went one — well, actually five — better, asking 16 questions. He had previously listed his five “non-negotiables” for a new United owner: a new sporting project; a new or redeveloped Old Trafford; a new training ground; a full redevelopment of the surrounding land to create a “Manchester United World” and an amazing fan experience; and to pay off the club’s debt and stop taking dividends until all of this is done. And quite reasonably he asked: “How does a minority investor positively impact the club to achieve the above?”

    Neville argued that the Glazers had “overstayed their welcome”. That was one thing he got wrong. Beyond the sanctuary of the Old Trafford boardroom, the Glazers were never made welcome in Manchester. There were fan protests when they arrived in the summer of 2005, immediately loading their acquisition debt against the club, and they have continued ever since.

    Even when United continued to win trophies under Sir Alex Ferguson in the late 2000s and early 2010s, there was never the slightest goodwill towards the Glazers. Over the past decade, as Ferguson’s departure has led to a downturn in performance on the pitch, the owners’ failings have been exposed: not just the enormous financial burden of their ownership, but the glaring lack of football strategy, the lack of investment in Old Trafford, even the flat-lining of commercial performance until the past 12 months. The Glazers’ prominent role in the failed European Super League launch only added to the revulsion felt by many United fans.

    So how, as Neville asked, does a minority investment like that proposed by Ratcliffe represent the kind of change United need?


    The Glazers are unpopular with large sections of the United fanbase (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

    All the early indications are that Ratcliffe and INEOS will look to take control of the sporting side of the club while leaving the Glazers in charge of the business for now. Any challenge to the complacent culture of the past decade would be welcome, but it feels like an underwhelming compromise for a club so obviously in need of new ambition, new vision, new investment and new energy across the board.

    Beyond that, when it comes to football strategy, INEOS’s record in Nice and Lausanne has been mixed rather than outstanding. They have shown a greater feel for and interest in the sport than the Glazers, but Sir Dave Brailsford, the company’s director of sport, has yet to replicate in football the great success he had with British Cycling and Team Sky.

    Right now, Nice lie second in Ligue 1, above Paris Saint-Germain, but their performance over the first four years under INEOS (fifth, ninth, fifth, ninth) is actually slightly down on the five years before that (eleventh, fourth, third, eighth, seventh). There have been a few notable wins in the transfer market (signing Mario Lemina from Southampton and selling him on to Wolverhampton Wanderers for a profit, signing Amine Gouiri from Lyon and selling him on to Rennes at a profit) and there are high hopes for Terem Moffi, the Nigeria forward they signed from Lorient earlier this year, but it is fair to say that, after six years at Lausanne and four years at Nice, INEOS are still to prove themselves in football.

    Still, patchy sounds better than the Glazers’ record. And if Ratcliffe and Brailsford were to turn to a candidate such as Paul Mitchell, who is respected for his recruitment and strategic work at MK Dons, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, RB Leipzig and Monaco, that would seem a positive addition for United, who, for reasons unclear, have appeared determined to avoid appointing any kind of proven, experienced, high-class operator to oversee their football strategy. But again, it doesn’t sound like a silver bullet.

    As for the question of investments in stadium and infrastructure — let alone the supplementary point Neville made about wanting a United hierarchy which could show positive leadership at a critical juncture for the sport’s future — once more there is the question of how much change a minority investor could make.

    A redeveloped, expanded Old Trafford, moving towards a capacity of 90,000? Sounds great. But even with Ratcliffe on board, is a Glazer-led regime really going to commit to and, crucially, deliver that?

    Ratcliffe’s willingness to settle for a minority stake might alienate that section of United’s fanbase who are left praying for a dramatic late twist — or else preparing to mourn the takeover that never was.

    To some supporters, beguiled by the PR spin, Sheikh Jassim represented a panacea, the antidote to all the modern United’s many ills, someone who was going to wave a magic wand and wipe out the club’s debt, rebuild Old Trafford and the training ground and recruit a raft of world-class players who would restore the club to pre-eminence while seeking to “place the fans at the heart” of the club once more. As for the ethical baggage that would have come with being bought by a member of Qatar’s ruling class, it simply didn’t matter to those fans.

    But here’s the thing. United’s global profile is so huge that they do not need that ownership model and all the entanglements that tend to come with it, the way other clubs, starved not just of success but of hope, were perceived to need it. United just need better owners than the Glazers: owners who respect the club for the historic institution it is and look to develop it and improve it, on the pitch and off it, rather than seeing it as a cash cow; owners who are willing, where necessary, to invest money in the club, but will certainly not take money out.


    Old Trafford needs investment (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    They need someone to invest in the stadium, to address the problems that have arrived due to neglect under the Glazers’ ownership. But that is where debt — of the type taken on by Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur with their stadium constructions and Liverpool with the construction of two new stands — is entirely legitimate, as opposed to the Glazers running the club into hundreds of millions of pounds worth of debt just to prop up an investment they could not otherwise have afforded.

    It often seems there is no better owner than the one who, having made grandiose promises (even if only through PR statements), walks away, leaving fans to fantasise about what might have been. For Sheikh Jassim at United in 2023, think Dubai International Capital with Liverpool in the 2000s and Alisher Usmanov at Arsenal in the early 2010s among so many others.

    Ratcliffe could easily have been another of those, playing the “boyhood fan from Failsworth” card, making big promises but then disappearing. There is something to be admired in Sheikh Jassim’s unwillingness to indulge the Glazers any further, but that was always the price on the ticket: either pay their grossly inflated asking price for the whole club or settle for a minority stake, as Ratcliffe appears to have done.

    A few weeks ago, with the takeover saga at what felt like an impasse, Ratcliffe gave a brief, unexpected insight into his feelings on the matter. In a video to commemorate 25 years of INEOS, the British billionaire said: “You can’t really contemplate acquiring a brand like Manchester United and failing — because the failure is just far too public and too excruciating.”

    It was a statement that was open to interpretation. Did he mean 1) having entered the bidding process, he could not bear the thought of losing out? Or 2) if he succeeded in buying the club, the thought of failing would be impossible to contemplate.

    Most media outlets settled on the first interpretation, but some of us thought he probably meant the second: that, having acquired United, you cannot contemplate failing. That would suggest a desperation to force change, even if it means accepting what might previously have felt like an unpalatable comprise by going in as a minority investor.

    What all of this demonstrates is that Ratcliffe is fiercely determined to get a slice of United — even if for now it really is just a slice — and, ultimately, to take full control and make a success of it. He surely isn’t doing this to be a bit-part player in the Glazers’ miserable Old Trafford story.

    And so once more we come back to the romantic considerations versus the practical: the sugar-coated fairytale of a local lad (albeit a petrochemical billionaire and tax exile) taking over and restoring his boyhood club to former glories versus the pragmatic reality of a torturous business negotiation that ends with him buying a 25 per cent stake in order to join forces with a regime that every United supporters wants rid of.

    A new dawn at Manchester United? It really doesn’t feel like it. Not until the sun has set on the Glazer regime once and for all.

    (Top photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)

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    The New York Times

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  • Ole Gunnar Solskjaer exclusive: His first in-depth interview since leaving Man United

    Ole Gunnar Solskjaer exclusive: His first in-depth interview since leaving Man United

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    “I’m on a ferry now,” says Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, talking on the phone in his first in-depth media interview since being sacked as Manchester United manager in 2021.

    “We’re going to Surnadal for our under-16s’ second team. I’ve driven from my home in Kristiansund. The team minibus is next to me with 14 boys aged 15 enjoying themselves.

    “This is how I remember growing up as a footballer. It’s lovely being with my youngest son Elijah, just as it was when I coached our eldest son Noah after I was sacked at Cardiff — and our daughter Karna just before I joined Man United.

    “To be able to turn offers down that I didn’t feel 100 per cent about to spend time with my family is a privilege. When you manage Manchester United, you sacrifice all of that.”

    It is almost two years since Solskjaer was sacked, the club legend dismissed six months after taking the team to the Europa League final, where they were beaten by Villarreal on penalties.

    He has not spoken fully about his experiences at Old Trafford. I have regularly asked him to talk, but the time has never been right. A text on Monday morning confirmed he was now ready to speak — and no topics were off the table.


    Solskjaer took United to the Europa League final (UEFA – Handout/UEFA)

    During a one-hour conversation, it becomes clear he is ready to return to professional football. On Wednesday, he begins a new role as a UEFA technical observer but he is thinking about management again.

    In this wide-ranging interview, he discusses:

    • How signing Ronaldo “felt right but turned out wrong”
    • Telling players at half-time of his final match that he expected to lose his job
    • Views that some of his players “weren’t as good as their perception of themselves”
    • How some players turned down the chance to be captain
    • Filming players singing “Ole’s at the wheel” after famous PSG win
    • Why he wanted to film farewell video
    • Missing out on Harry Kane, Erling Haaland and other stars
    • His view of the Glazers

    “I’m doing a lot of coaching, four times per week, and we have three teams,” he says en route to the junior game 300 miles north west of Oslo. “I’m helping the kids, who enjoy it. You see a different side to football, the grassroots – except it’s all plastic pitches here. You see the brightness in their eyes, they listen to you, they want to learn.

    “But you start to miss it (professional football) when you see the games, either in person or on television. Since I left United, I’ve travelled around as a fan with my kids, going to places like Napoli, Milan and Dortmund to experience games. We loved it.

    “My role with UEFA means watching Champions League matches in person. I can watch teams from a different perspective than being a manager: analyse them, solve problems, see how both teams will try to hurt each other.

    “Then I’m going to the east coast of the United States in a few weeks to see Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, see a few games and see what’s what.”

    Do you want to manage again?

    Yes, and I’ve had offers. Most recently, two from Saudi Arabia. My best mate, who is also my agent, sifts through them. If you’ve managed Man United, you put your own criteria about what you want to work with.

    I love England and the Premier League. Even the Championship feels stronger than ever, but I don’t feel bound to England. Maybe a different challenge where I need to experience a new culture and learn a new language.

    The DNA and identity of the club are important, a club where I can be the best me. It has to be a match. Maybe I made the wrong decision to go to Cardiff, for example, where there was a clash of identities and styles.

    What I miss most is working with good people, coming in every day, discussing football and putting a plan together for the next game. It’s not just about formations, but creating a culture where the staff enjoy their job and building a team together.

    Nearly two years after leaving, how do feel about your time managing United now?

    Well, there’s something missing: a trophy. One penalty could have changed that (in the shootout defeat to Villarreal in the Europa League final) and my time there would be viewed differently.

    Trophies are important, but it was also important to lay the foundation of good performances. We managed to do that for a long time, consistently. Ultimately, that’s not good enough, but the remit I was given was to get fans smiling again and we had something going. We were top of the league in September 2021, Cristiano Ronaldo came in, and Raphael Varane and Jadon Sancho joined.

    And?

    And we’d gone strong by signing these players. It was about taking the next step to challenge for the title. And, unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.

    manchester-united


    Solskjaer helped bring Sancho to United (Adrian Dennis via Getty Images)

    There’s a perception among fans and some media that Ronaldo ruined your team, that he was a vanity buy by Ed Woodward. What’s the truth about his arrival and how you found him to work with?

    It was a decision that was very difficult to turn down and I felt we had to take it, but it turned out wrong. It felt so right when he signed and the fans felt that at that Newcastle game, when Old Trafford was rocking (after Ronaldo scored twice in a 4-1 win). He was still one of the best goalscorers in the world, he was looking strong.

    When I looked at the fixtures it was going to be a deciding period: Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham, and Leicester away. Then Chelsea and Arsenal, plus Champions League games. Things went against us. It started with Aston Villa at home (a 1-0 defeat) and a late penalty miss.

    When you have a group you need everyone to pull in the same direction. When things didn’t go right, you could see certain players and egos came out. We beat Tottenham convincingly 3-0 away, but then we lost two games…


    Ronaldo scored regularly on his return to Old Trafford but there were questions about his overall impact (Marco Bertorello via Getty Images)

    You lost five league games from seven that autumn. Did you feel you were going to lose your job?

    Nobody told me, but I knew at half-time against Watford (a 4-1 defeat in November 2021). We didn’t look like a Man United team; the players weren’t running for each other. At half-time, I told the players it was probably going to be the last time we worked together and to play with pride. We almost turned it around, until Harry Maguire got sent off.

    And then?

    I got a text message the next morning from Ed Woodward saying he needed to see me in his office at Carrington. That was pretty hard when you’ve been at the club for 18 years with all those good and bad times.

    I’d had lots of backing and good times with Ed. He’d given me the chance and for that, I’ll always be grateful. I dropped my family at the airport before the text arrived. After the text, I told my wife that I might be back in Norway before her.

    It was an emotional day. Very emotional. I didn’t think it would be, but it was like leaving your family. I wanted to speak to all the players and say goodbye. I spoke to the coaches and the staff. Then I went back to an empty house.

    You did a farewell video. Was that your idea?

    I didn’t want not to say goodbye to fans who’d treated me so well, fans who felt like family. Doing the video felt like the right thing to do.

    Were you angry? Did you feel let down by your players?

    Not angry. Not bitter. Disappointed. I’d not managed to do my dream job as I’d hoped. I’d gone in to do a job for six months and enjoy it. I certainly did, especially that win at Paris Saint-Germain (a stunning 3-1 away win in the Champions League last 16 in March 2019 to reach the quarter-finals).

    And there were some great moments when I got the job permanently. The wins at City away, beating City at home with Scott McTominay scoring with the last kick before the lockdown. I’ve never felt Old Trafford rocking like that. The fans stayed behind for ages.

    As it happens, that was the last time they’d be in the stadium for many months. Another win at PSG. Staying unbeaten away from home for so long. It’s not easy to go 29 away league games unbeaten.


    Victory at PSG a highlight of Solskjaer’s time in charge (Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)

    Empty stadiums actually helped us in some ways as we could coach during the matches.

    Those City and Liverpool teams were the best that their clubs, with fantastic managers, have ever had. I know that’s a bold statement because Liverpool were so good in the ’80s, but they were a fantastic side under Jurgen Klopp.

    In my last season, we played Liverpool at home. I felt the players were ready for it, just like I’d felt they were ready when we’d gone to City and won. We could have sat back and countered but my decision was to go for it. We lost 5-0. It was 50/50, more or less, in possession and chances at half-time, yet we were 4-0 down.

    I made the wrong decision and that was my lowest point as United manager by a mile. Roberto Firmino was probably the opposition player who caused me the most problems as a manager. The 6-1 defeat at home to Spurs was different and affected by a sending-off.

    Is the United job impossible?

    No, but it’s difficult, especially for managers following one of the best managers ever. The expectations are very high but we can’t live in the same era as when I played. We had Arsenal and Chelsea as rivals towards the end. Now, most teams have money or even if they don’t, they don’t need to sell.

    Back then, Wayne and Cristiano were the best young players and we signed them. Now, United can’t just go and buy Evan Ferguson. We couldn’t buy the players I mentioned to the club.

    Players like?

    Erling Haaland, before he made his Salzburg debut. Declan Rice, who wouldn’t have cost what he did in the summer. We discussed Moises Caicedo, but we felt we needed players ready for there and then. Brighton are very good at letting players come from abroad and find their feet for a year and a half. At United, you don’t have that luxury and that has cost the club loads of players.

    We wanted Jude Bellingham badly — he’s a Man United player, but I respect he chose Dortmund. That was probably sensible. But it’s why I respect Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Dan James and Jadon. Young players prepared to come into a team that wasn’t 100 per cent there like it was when I arrived.

    I would have signed Kane every day of the week and my understanding was that he wanted to come. But the club didn’t have the budget with the financial constraints from Covid-19, there was no bottomless pit.

    You came from abroad and needed a week and a half as a player…

    I was a scorer and scored with my first kick. I came into a perfect situation. I had Eric Cantona as the best second striker, Andy Cole was injured. I took my chance, I was ready. The Premier League is very different now, it’s difficult.

    Ralf Rangnick came in after you were sacked and was critical of the club he found. Was that a slight against you?

    The club he found in November 2021 was different from September 2021. I told him when I gave my opinion on every player. Things had soured, the collective had been lost and that’s not Man United, where teams are built on the collective.

    Some players felt they should’ve played more and weren’t constructive to the environment. That’s a huge sin for me. When I didn’t start games I wanted to prove to the manager he’d made the wrong decision.

    Now, a lot of players aren’t like that. Agents and family members get into their heads and tell them they’re better than they are because they have a vested interest. It’s a disease of modern football.

    We had a great group to work with by the end of the 2020-21 season. We got to the FA Cup semi-final in 2020 and the Europa League final in 2021.

    Would you have done anything differently in that Europa League final, or that FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea?

    Villarreal under Unai Emery were hard to break down. I’ve not watched it back.


    David de Gea missed the decisive penalty in the 2021 Europa League shootout (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

    But you told me you’ve watched every United game you’d managed…

    Not that one. Or Liverpool, Spurs or Watford. No chance. I watched the rest, we were a decent side. But I should have started or at least brought on Nemanja Matic against Villarreal. That game was for him. I didn’t choose him because I felt others deserved it.

    It’s difficult to leave players out but you have to take risks. I risked kids for the final game of 2020-21 at Wolves, risked an unbeaten away record. I was proud of how those kids reacted (in a 2-1 win).

    You were criticised — online mainly, but it became a narrative — for not having tactical plans and being just a counter-attacking team. Can you talk to us about your philosophy and how important the coaches were in that?

    I love Kieran McKenna and Michael Carrick to bits. Top coaches and they’ll prove it. Mick Phelan had experience, Martyn Pert had worked around the world. We felt you needed to defend well to attack well. We always wanted to press our opponents, even at Anfield or the Etihad, even with injuries. And we usually did well.

    I wanted us to get forward quickly and it’s physically demanding. It sounds like counter-attacking, but at our best, we’d go to places like Spurs, Brighton and Everton under Carlo Ancelotti and we’d control the game. Or Leeds at home, when we won 6-2 and 5-1 against Marcelo Bielsa’s side.

    We didn’t always get recognition for our organised attacks and defending, though other managers and coaches complimented us on our tactical approaches with and without the ball.

    Football has changed even since I left as a manager. It’s so different to when I played and we focused on pace, power, personality and individuals who’d win a game. Now, teams are more comfortable playing in their own box, sucking opponents in and exploiting the space they jump from.

    You need players who are comfortable and capable of doing that. If you played a pass across your goal in the ’80s or ’90s you’d be taken off. Now, it’s normal and if you can beat that first and second press, you’re in.

    Which of your signings were your best?

    Bruno Fernandes came straight in and lifted the team. Harry Maguire – it’s a disgrace that he’s getting so much abuse. I feel sorry for him, but he’s a strong lad and I hope it turns for him. He raised our defence big time when he arrived and lifted the mood around the place. I can’t remember every signing I made, but I should because there was a cap on three main ones every season.

    Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Harry Maguire


    Solskjaer appreciates the way Maguire improved his defence (Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images)

    Who put the cap on? Does the structure of United work?

    I signed up for it when I arrived. I understood my remit and agreed to it. I can’t complain now and I’m not the type to moan after losing my job, but United have spent a lot more in the two summer transfer windows since I was there.

    How does that make you feel?

    That they’ve seen what the club needs.

    Does that not frustrate you?

    It’s not about me or how much I got every summer, but how much money the club wanted to spend. I want United to be on top again, to beat City and Liverpool.

    I made one selfish decision — to keep Scott McTominay when he could have gone on loan to Derby in 2019 to play more football. We kept him, we played him and after beating PSG away when he and Fred played well at the base of midfield, I think we did the right thing. Scott’s a Man United player through and through.

    We watched Ajax beat Real Madrid the night before and that gave us hope that another young team could play with no fear against the best. We didn’t even have time to work on the tactics properly and played a 4-4-2, with the strikers dropping deep. Fred was to play like he played at Shakhtar Donetsk.

    I knew Marcus would score that decisive penalty. I looked at the away fans; they just erupted. My young team had won. Sir Alex Ferguson and Eric Cantona came into the dressing room after the game.

    The players were singing “Ole’s at the wheel”. All of them, singing and dancing on the table. What a moment. Players who couldn’t really speak English jumping around kicking pizza boxes and singing “Ole’s at the wheel”. It felt good. It’s the only time I got my phone out and filmed my players.

    United have signed some good players — Rasmus Hojlund will be exciting and is the type of player United need to be signing.

    Did you feel the players threw you under the bus, as some of your former team-mates have stated?

    No. Not really. Some weren’t as good as their own perception of themselves. I won’t name names, but I was very disappointed when a couple turned down the chance to be captain. I was also disappointed when others said they wouldn’t play or train because they wanted to force their way out.

    There was stuff in the media after I left about how I treated some players, which were complete lies, but I had a solid, honest relationship with most of them.

    When you see what Erik ten Hag is having to deal with off the pitch, do you have sympathy?

    I know what he’s going through. It’s a dream job, but it’s difficult. You’re dealing with humans with all their problems and backgrounds — this isn’t a computer simulation. But most are good professionals who want to do well. Some think about No 1 first, most think of the club.

    What do you think of the Glazers owning United?

    In my conversations with them, they were honest and upfront. I had to be patient and mentally strong — and I was. And they’ve backed the manager now.

    How did you feel when the group of fans turned up at the training ground to protest about the Glazers? What was your view of what went on that day?

    It was their right — and I went to speak to them. Security didn’t want me to, but I wanted to go and speak to them. I listened and I felt we had a good conversation.

    Speaking to fans is part of being United manager. You’re encouraged to have security around you but I didn’t feel comfortable with that and usually wanted to be on my own.

    I’ve not been back much since the whole family moved to Norway last year. People give me the thumbs-up in Manchester, though they’re more likely to do that in real life. It’s easier to say, “You’re s***” when you’re anonymous behind a keyboard.

    Did you feel supported by United fans?

    Apart from Watford away, I can’t remember any negativity at games, bar the odd comment. At Watford, I went to the away end after and remember thinking, “I really don’t have the backing of all of them”. Bruno was there too, but I knew I was finished. The 4-1 looked awful, but it was 2-1 after 90 minutes. We conceded two more. I understand how fans felt — 4-1 is 4-1.

    Did you want to sign Sancho and how do you think he’s done?

    Yes, I wanted to sign him. Manchester United will never sign a player the manager doesn’t want. That’s not the case everywhere. Jadon was put up as the No 1 target for the right wing by the scouts and when you look at his talent, I could see why.

    Unfortunately, it has not worked out. When he arrived, he had to go to hospital and that was a setback as he couldn’t start the first games. He’s immensely talented and we haven’t seen the best of him. I hope we do, but he prefers to play left wing… where Marcus plays.

    By that time, things had turned, but you’d had such a bright start when you arrived to replace Jose Mourinho in December 2018…

    Those first 15 games, I loved it. Right from arriving and walking into the staff party at Lancashire Cricket Club. The fans loved it, the media too. With the media, it was a game in itself. Clubs want to control the narrative. Maybe I should have been more open, I don’t know.

    I never leaked a single piece of information when I was manager. I need my dignity, I need to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. I’m idealistic, I still think it’s the beautiful game.

    Why was there a downturn in results after your interim position became permanent?

    Some players wanted to go. Tiredness, since we demanded a lot, and that caused injuries. The air came out of the balloon at the end of that first season but in my two full seasons, we finished third and second in the Premier League.

    There appears to be this cycle under the Glazers of manager arrives, things pick up, things take a dip, then within a couple of years, the manager gets sacked. How do you see it?

    Let’s hope Erik is successful and if there is a cycle, that he breaks it. Someone is going to do it. It’s difficult when great managers go — Valeriy Lobanovskyi with Dynamo Kyiv, Rosenborg with Nils Arne Eggen. In Norway we have a saying, “You don’t want to jump after Wirkola” because Bjorn Wirkola was one of the best ski jumpers. We’re now five or six down the line. It’ll happen.

    (Top photo: John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Why Manchester United did not sign Harry Kane: Ten Hag’s top target but scouts pushed back

    Why Manchester United did not sign Harry Kane: Ten Hag’s top target but scouts pushed back

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    There were staff at Manchester United who believed signing Harry Kane would transform their team into title challengers. Erik ten Hag’s thinking was along the same lines. That’s why, as striker options were being assessed towards the end of last season, Kane was top of the United manager’s list.

    But on Wednesday night, when United face Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena to start their Champions League group campaign, Kane will be playing for the serial German champions rather than Ten Hag’s side, giving immediate cause for reflection about why the much-touted transfer never happened.

    United had looked at a move for Kane at various stages over the last few years but, back in May, the stars finally seemed to be aligning. Kane was about to enter the final year of his Tottenham Hotspur contract, and United had qualified for the Champions League while Spurs missed out on Europe altogether.

    United were aware Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy had two choices in the summer window: sell Kane, or somehow get him to sign a new contract. Losing Kane for nothing at the end of the 2023-24 season was not an option for the north London club.

    Kane made it clear he would decline to extend his deal until the new season was well underway and he’d had a chance to assess what life was like under new Spurs’ head coach Ange Postecoglou. So that left a sale as the likeliest outcome, and even though Levy let it be known he would be against allowing the England captain to join any of their domestic rivals, Ten Hag wanted United to test the waters.


    (Photo: Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)

    By mid-June however, United had decided to go for Rasmus Hojlund as their big signing up front rather than Kane.

    For a start, football director John Murtough always felt it was unwise to get drawn into a protracted negotiation with Levy that had no guarantee of reaching a compromise, having been stung by the extended pursuit of Frenkie de Jong from Barcelona in 2022 that ended in disappointment for United.

    Murtough believed Levy would not sell Kane to another Premier League club and preferred to focus energy on more realistic targets. There were, though, people close to United who thought the only way they would truly find out on that was by asking the question to relevant people around the player and Spurs.

    Yet there was a more fundamental issue.

    In United’s model, either the recruitment department or the manager has the right to veto targets, and scouts pushed back against the idea of signing Kane.

    Ultimately, co-owner Joel Glazer and chief executive Richard Arnold decided going for Kane was not a reasonable use of resources when factoring in his age. United had been told Kane was seeking £30million ($37.1m) in annual wages, about £500,000 per week, and after adding in an expected transfer fee of more than £100million, the club ruled the cost to be too high for a 30-year-old.

    Ten Hag may not have agreed with that calculation, given Kane’s proven pedigree, but he accepted the decision in the context of the budget once the realities of financial fair play had been mapped out to him. But Ten Hag stayed full of praise for Kane whenever asked about the player.

    In August, as Kane’s move to Bayern for more than €100million (£86.4m, $110m) was being confirmed, Ten Hag said: “He’s a great striker, clear, a goal-maker; and apart from that he has all the conditions and abilities that you want to see in a striker. It’s a miss for the Premier League, absolutely.”

    By that stage, United had agreed a deal worth £72million with Atalanta for Hojlund. While the Dane’s transfer fee was closer to Kane’s than had been anticipated, his salary was much lower, which became a major factor. At 20 years old, so did his age. Ten Hag has spoken glowingly about Hojlund’s abilities.

    Despite all the anticipation over Kane in April and May, there were never any real talks between people at United and Tottenham, or with the player’s representatives, led by his brother Charlie.

    Harry Kane


    (Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images)

    Instead, there was an approach from Saudi Arabia, with a club there indicating they were prepared to offer a scale of transfer fee that Tottenham would instantly accept. But Kane’s camp declined talks as they didn’t want to be disingenuous about his intentions. He wanted to continue his career in Europe.

    And three of the continent’s biggest clubs were interested.

    Real Madrid put together a £60million bid, and Paris Saint-Germain also made an approach. But it was Bayern who engaged with Levy to negotiate over several weeks, leading to an announcement on August 12. An agreement was reached the previous midnight for a fee of more than €100million, although there was one late bump in the road when the Germans were asked to pay another £20m at 2.30am. Spurs insist there were no further negotiations.

    Bayern had booked a plane for Kane to depart to Munich at 7am, but at 5.30am Bayern executives instructed him not to fly. Kane told Spurs he was prepared to turn up to training with them instead if it wasn’t sorted.

    Ultimately the price originally agreed was kept and Kane, having barely slept, flew to Germany later in the day.

    Read more: Secret meeting and late tension – the inside story of how Harry Kane left Tottenham for Bayern

    If that kind of 11th-hour gamesmanship was predicted by United, some close observers felt the club could still have used Bayern as a stalking horse, sensing a rare opportunity to bring in a player of singular talent. Their argument was that once Tottenham had agreed a fee with Bayern, United should have matched it. If Levy had then refused to sell, it could have been a case of restraint of trade for Kane.

    But that prospect was over once United signed Hojlund, who was also on Bayern’s list before they pressed ahead for Kane.

    There was an element of irony in United’s pleasure at getting their transfer work done earlier than is usually the case. Kane ended up making his debut for Bayern three weeks before Hojlund played for United owing to the Dane arriving with a back issue.

    Kane might not have chosen United anyway. He was open to moving up to Manchester but he also made enquiries about the state of the club and was not sure it was the right place for his next step, especially amid the uncertainty over their ownership. Bayern, as genuine Champions League contenders, were a more appealing prospect. So too was the chance to experience a new country.

    “Over the summer I know there were some talks between a few clubs in the background,” said Kane. “Bayern were a team I was really interested by, excited by; there weren’t really too many other discussions once they came in.

    “It was down to Tottenham and Bayern. Manchester (United) are a great club, a really big club, but I decided to come here and am really glad I have.”

    The reaction has been seen across Germany.

    The Bundesliga’s Twitter account posted about Kane’s availability for their fantasy football game and to date Bayern have sold 220,000 shirts bearing his name, with an annual target of one million.

    “It’s a big thing, we took the skipper of England out of England,” said Bayern manager Thomas Tuchel. “Anyone looking for a (No) 9 would’ve been happy to have Harry in the team. He makes the team better and gives you what you want from a nine.

    “I’m not sure what’s going on at other clubs, but we’re more than happy that he finally took the decision and came to make us better.”

    For Kane, the Bayern move was as much about respect as anything: taking on a fresh challenge and having the pressure of needing to win. He has made a good start, scoring four goals and assisting once in his first four Bundesliga games.

    “There is a reason that Bayern Munich brought me to the club,” said Kane. “They were eager to get back to winning the Champions League. They feel I can be a big help and I feel I can help the team as well.

    “Time will tell how the game (against United) plays out. We have to first focus on the group stage and starting well tomorrow will be important. That is why I am here, I want to play in competitions at the highest level.”

    Kane has not ruled out the possibility of returning to play in England again. He believes he has seven or eight years left at the top level in Europe, and breaking Alan Shearer’s Premier League scoring record (he trails by 47, 213 to 260) by playing a couple more seasons is plausible.

    For now, though, he has the opportunity to show United first-hand what they could have got had they taken the plunge.

     (Top photo: Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Cristiano Ronaldo leaves Manchester United with immediate effect

    Cristiano Ronaldo leaves Manchester United with immediate effect

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    Manchester United on Tuesday confirmed that Cristiano Ronaldo will leave the club by mutual agreement with immediate effect. This comes after days of speculation following Ronaldo’s explosive interview with British journalist Piers Morgan. 
      
    The club thanked the legend for his immense contribution across two spells at Old Trafford, scoring 145 goals in 346 appearances, and wished him and his family well for the future.

    “Everyone at Manchester United remains focused on continuing the team’s progress under Erik ten Hag and working together to deliver success on the pitch,” the club said.

    Ronaldo’s future with the club was headed towards an end following a public outburst against the side and manager Erik Ten Hag. During his interview, Ronaldo accused the club of ‘betraying’ him and said manager Erik Ten Hag showed him a ‘lack of respect’ by dropping him to the bench. 

    Following this, Manchester United on Friday said it had initiated appropriate steps in response to Cristiano Ronaldo’s recent media interview. “We will not be making further comment until this process reaches its conclusion,” it had said.

    The development comes two days ahead of Portugal’s FIFA World Cup opening game against Ghana in Qatar.

     

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  • Report: Streamer Deleted From TV Station’s Feed After Abusive, Misogynist Video Resurfaces

    Report: Streamer Deleted From TV Station’s Feed After Abusive, Misogynist Video Resurfaces

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    iShowSpeed

    Photo: Zac Goodwin – PA Images (Getty Images)

    Streamer, YouTuber and all-round internet celebrity IShowSpeed has recently been helping one of the biggest TV stations in Europe, Sky Sports, with its broadcasts of English Premier League matches. That was, reportedly, until the executives at the channel found out about a video that went viral back in April.

    03:51

    Halo Infinite Winter Update’s New Multiplayer Maps

    Wednesday 4:38PM

    IShowSpeed—more commonly known as simply ‘Speed’—had been in the stands earlier this month to watch his team Manchester United play Fulham in the league (and then my beloved Aston Villa for the League Cup). While there, he helped present segments for the channel and appeared on their social media feeds. Here’s one (surviving) example:

    And here’s another (uploaded independently by someone who had saved the footage), showing him failing to recognise either Jamie Redknapp or Louis Saha:

    Ishowspeed in SKY SPORTS STUDIO reacting to no RONALDO

    Speed, who got famous streaming games like Fortnite, NBA 2K and FIFA, was presumably brought in by Sky to leverage his internet following and supposed appeal to younger football fans, which at time of posting stands at 13 million YouTube subscribers and 5.4 million Instagram followers (he is permanently banned from Twitch).

    G/O Media may get a commission

    As of today, though, nearly all of Speed’s promotional material on Sky’s social media has been deleted (with the exception of that single Tweet above), with The Athletic reporting that Sky made the decision after they were made aware of a video that did the rounds in April—one that became so notorious we reported on it—in which Speed made incredibly hostile and misogynistic comments to his teammates:

    While Speed later apologised for those comments, they were so bad that Riot Games banned him from not just Valorant, but League of Legends as well. His Twitch ban, meanwhile, was also for misogyny, just a different video. It’s weird—given that it was so widely reported, the tweet above having 180,000 likes and 11.7 million views and it was only 7 months ago—that nobody at Sky thought to even Google his name before putting him in the spotlight like this!

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    Luke Plunkett

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  • Cristiano Ronaldo Is In Decline And Hurting Manchester United

    Cristiano Ronaldo Is In Decline And Hurting Manchester United

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    In the 88th minute of Manchester United’s 3-1 defeat to Aston Villa on Sunday Cristiano Ronaldo conceded a free-kick with a foul on Ezri Konsa.

    The Portuguese legend’s tackle was late and allowed Villa to waste more time as they attempted to secure their first home league win over United for 27 years.

    Ronaldo threw back his shoulders and screamed to the sky in frustration. A minute later he was convinced United should have been awarded a corner and again let out a cry of anguish and this time he angrily flung his arms around as well.

    Ronaldo’s frustration was obviously not only about these two decisions going against him, but about his own declining form.

    At Villa Park he was once again a shadow of the player he was in his prime, but also a shadow of the player he was even last season as he delivered another largely anonymous performance.

    Ronaldo has enjoyed an incredible career, and could arguably be considered the greatest player of all-time, but he turns 38 in February and is beginning to look his age.

    He can no longer beat players with trickery or pace; he knows it and doesn’t even attempt to, but last season he could get by with his intelligence, positioning and clinical finishing, but this season that appears to have deserted him as well.

    In the final years of his own glorious career the former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson said, “I beat every other guy, but I can’t beat Father Time.”

    Ronaldo has evaded Father Time these last few years, continuing to score at an incredible rate, but that cannot continue forever.

    Ronaldo has scored just one goal in the Premier League this season, and overall has a record of just three goals in 16 games in all competitions.

    When Tyson began to accept he was no longer the same explosive boxer he was in his youth he also said, “I felt like I was 120 years old. It’s over. I don’t want to disgrace the sport I love.”

    It is still a long way from being over for Ronaldo and he can still offer something to a multitude of teams, but possibly not as a starter in a team with aspirations of finishing in the Premier League’s top four.

    Manchester United are struggling for goals this season, having scored just 18 in 13 Premier League games. In comparison the league leaders Arsenal have 31 league goals, and second-placed Manchester City have 39 league goals.

    But Ronaldo is clearly not the solution to this problem, and his decline from last season when he managed 24 goals in all competitions is becoming increasingly stark.

    In the first half of United’s loss at Villa Park Christen Eriksen lofted in a cross to present him with a chance he would have scored last season, but on this occasion he could only head the ball straight at the Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez.

    In the second half Ronaldo had a chance in the Villa penalty area and fired it high over the bar to be serenaded by whistles from the opposition fans. A chance to recreate some of his old magic with a free-kick was also wasted as he hit it straight into the wall.

    The Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag can quite clearly see Ronaldo’s decline for himself, and has opted to start most games in the Premier League without him.

    However, with injuries to Antony and Jadon Sancho, and Anthony Martial only being fit enough for the bench he was forced to start him against Aston Villa.

    Ronaldo also started against Real Sociedad on Thursday, and although United triumphed 1-0 with a goal he helped to create for Alejandro Garnacho, he was unable to find the second goal they needed to automatically reach next year’s Europa League round of sixteen. The effort was there but the quality was absent.

    In a surprise move Ten Hag appointed Ronaldo as his captain for the game at Aston Villa with Bruno Fernandes and Harry Maguire both missing, which was only two weeks after dropping him after he had refused to play against Tottenham.

    But Ronaldo was unable to offer any real leadership, or even play as an example, being too consumed with his own frustrations as he desperately searched for some form.

    It would be foolish to completely dismiss Ronaldo’s use to this United squad, and he still has the ability to make an impact and find a goal, but overall he offers so much less now.

    Ronaldo’s dwindling mobility and pace were apparent last season, but he compensated for that with a steady supply of goals, but they too have disappeared this season.

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    Sam Pilger, Contributor

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  • Erik Ten Hag Hails Casemiro’s Impact At Manchester United

    Erik Ten Hag Hails Casemiro’s Impact At Manchester United

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    Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has hailed the impact of Casemiro at the Old Trafford club since his arrival from Real Madrid in the summer.

    The Brazilian midfielder has played an increasingly central part in Ten Hag’s improving side since they were beaten 6-3 by Manchester City a month ago.

    Casemiro was not in the starting line-up at the Etihad stadium that day, but since his recall to the side United have remained unbeaten in eight games.

    The former Real Madrid man has started every game in this run as United have won six games, against Everton, Tottenham and West Ham in the Premier League, and Omonia twice and Sheriff once in the Europa League, and drawn twice.

    It was Casemiro who kept the unbeaten run going with a late equaliser against Chelsea in United’s 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge at the end of October.

    “He told me when we had the first talk he needs a new challenge,” Ten Hag said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Because with Real Madrid he won everything.”

    “He was a big part of Real Madrid, still they don’t want him to go but he had the feeling I have to go to another club, to another league to prove myself and that shows his hunger, I really like that.”

    “From the first day he is coming with that attitude to every training, to every match and he proves it. I really like it and he will be more and more important to our team.”

    “I said it the other day, he is the cement between the stones in and out of possession. You see him growing from game to game and with that, our team is growing. We are really happy with that process but we have to keep that process going, because we are not satisfied, good is not good enough, we have to do better, so tomorrow we have another challenge and another test to do better.”

    The Dutchman was speaking ahead of Manchester United’s final Europa League group game against Real Sociedad in San Sebastian on Thursday.

    In the Reale Arena United need to win by two goals to overtake the Spanish side and finish top of their group to avoid having to play an extra round in the competition against one of the eight sides who will finish third in their Champions League group.

    A two goal victory on Thursday would see United straight through to the Europa League round of sixteen and avoid extra games in what will already be a congested schedule after the World Cup.

    The Spaniards have won all of their five Europa League group games so far this season, including a 1-0 victory over United back in September.

    Ten Hag believes his side has significantly improved since then. “It’s six weeks ago or so and it’s a different team, not all the players then are fit,” he said. “We’re growing, developing, making good progress.”

    “We know it’s difficult to win games here but we like the challenge. We know we have to win by two goals, we have a plan for that and we will do everything to get it done.”

    A draw would see Real Sociedad win the group, but Ten Hag believes they won’t be able to sit back for ninety minutes. “I think their coach likes proactive football, they want to play and I think they will stick to that. If it’s a different approach we will adapt but we know what to do.”

    Ten Hag confirmed United will be without Jadon Sancho, who is ill, and Antony and Antony Martial, who are both recovering from injuries.

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    Sam Pilger, Contributor

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  • David De Gea Is Changing His Game To Satisfy Erik Ten Hag’s Man Utd Demands

    David De Gea Is Changing His Game To Satisfy Erik Ten Hag’s Man Utd Demands

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    When the full time whistle blew on Manchester United’s narrow 1-0 win over West Ham United, almost every player in red rushed over to David de Gea to offer their congratulations, and thanks. The goalkeeper pulled off a number of saves to give his team a much-needed victory. It was the sort of performance de Gea has produced many times over his career.

    De Gea’s reputation as one of the best keepers of his generation is well-established, but the 31-year-old has come under scrutiny for his all-round play since the arrival of Erik Ten Hag at Old Trafford this summer. The Dutch coach prefers his goalkeepers to be comfortable with the ball at their feet and this isn’t a strength of de Gea’s game.

    Goalkeepers like Alisson Becker and Ederson have changed expectations of players in their position in the modern game. While keepers were not so long ago solely judged on their ability to keep the ball out of their net, they now play a role in starting attacks through their use of possession.

    This is where de Gea is lacking as demonstrated by the mistake the 31-year-old made on the ball in the catastrophic 4-0 defeat to Brentford earlier this season. Ten Hag has instead installed Lisandro Martinez as the deep-lying player to start attacking moves from deep with the Argentine tasked with taking the ball from de Gea as early as possible.

    However, de Gea is still making changes to his game in order to be a better fit for Ten Hag’s Manchester United. The Spaniard is coming off his line much quicker, something that allows United to play a higher defensive line in the knowledge they have something of a safety net to prevent opponents from getting in behind.

    A more proactive approach is hiding same of the flaws in de Gea’s game and Ten Hag is showing his faith in the 31-year-old after a difficult start to the season which had many speculating whether the Manchester United manager would be forced to enter the transfer market to find a new goalkeeper.

    “Everyone has his own opinion but for me, the first thing for a goalkeeper is to protect the goal and make sure you don’t concede goals,” Ten Hag said after de Gea’s eye-catching performance against West Ham. “In that fact he is magnificent. But with the feet he has capabilities as well. That is not only with the keeper but also the one in front and what options you give to bring passes in. I am convinced he can do it. The games so far he proved it.”

    It’s still entirely possible that Manchester United will target a new goalkeeper who is a more natural fit for Ten Hag’s approach with Porto’s Diogo Costa believed to be on their radar. De Gea, however, is a club icon and is showing willingness to learn new skills even at this late stage of his career.

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    Graham Ruthven, Contributor

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  • Manchester United 1-0 West Ham: Three Talking Points

    Manchester United 1-0 West Ham: Three Talking Points

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    Manchester United come away with another three points at home in the Premier League after their 1-0 win against West Ham United on Sunday evening.

    It was not their best performance of the season from an attacking point of view, but certainly up there from a defensive disposition. The back four, plus David de Gea, were exemplary in their efforts of keeping a clean sheet – in which they were successful.

    Even though West Ham are treading near the bottom of the table, playing a David Moyes-led side is never an easy task, but Manchester United found a way through and will be delighted with the three points that takes them on the cusp of a top four position.

    Here are three talking points from the game:

    Defensive Unity Coming Together

    It has been a long time coming for Manchester United to look defensive assured, but Erik Ten Hag has got them firmly on that path.

    This season looked ropey, at best, given the first two games of the Premier League season which ended in humiliating defeats to Brighton and Brentford, but since then, the Red Devils have only conceded twice at home.

    Even with the injured Raphael Varane, who has been magisterial in defence for Ten Hag, Man United are beginning to look like a well-oiled machine at the back, which Lisandro Martinez and Diogo Dalot are leading forces of that revitalisation.

    The Argentinean centre back has been a revelation under the Dutch manager, who he bought from his former club AFC Ajax for £50 million, and is comfortably one of Europe’s leading defenders on current form.

    Dalot looks a man transformed after his season-long loan last year, learning the Italian way of defending and having director Paolo Maldini guiding him. The Portugal international showcased a defensive masterclass on Sunday evening with his spatial awareness and defensive positioning.

    Harry Maguire has come back into the team after injury and, apart from a few mistakes in the first half, looked to grow into the game, especially in the second half. It has been a rocky 12 months for the Englishman, with bigger tests to come, but he came through with a positive performance when the scrutiny was firmly on him; as well as being under the eye of Three Lions boss Gareth Southgate.

    Ten Hag has this team ticking and that begins with the defensive unit, no matter who comes in and plays.

    Marcus Rashford Has Found His Swagger

    Similarly to a few of the other England players in this Manchester United team, Marcus Rashford did not look himself last season and was playing on empty – completely devoid of any confidence whatsoever.

    However, under Ten Hag, who has been using him as either an inside forward off the left or through the middle as an alternative to Cristiano Ronaldo, the England international has stepped up to the plate.

    With 10 goal involvements in 15 appearances in all competitions this season, Rashford is looking like his old self and some. With his brilliantly timed headed finish against the Hammers, it was the first time that the Red Devils fans saw that Rashford was capable of being an aerial threat.

    Timing could not be better for Rashford with the World Cup exactly 21 days away and Southgate in the stands to watch him closely. England need more direct options in attack and Rashford certainly offers that, even if he has not been involved in the most recent camps.

    It would be remiss of Southgate not to call him up to the squad with the current form he is in – with the same being said of Luke Shaw.

    Casemiro Is Essential To Manchester United

    While Manchester United fans of course knew of the level Casemiro was playing at for a decade in Spain at Real Madrid, not many expected him to be this commanding and have such a ginormous impact when introduced.

    It has been no secret that the Red Devils have been in dire need of a defensive-minded midfielder for many a season, and so the arrival of the Brazil international was a superb signing.

    But not many thought that he would produce the level of performances that he is currently doing on a consistent basis as quickly as he has. It is hard to believe that Los Blancos saw Casemiro as surplus to requirements given the quality he possesses, in which he is showing it regularly.

    Another reason as to why Manchester United’s defence has been improved is down to Casemiro’s presence. The Brazilian is exceptionally aware of what is around him and when to press the opposition to break up the opposition’s rhythm.

    Not only is he clinical in winning the ball back, but having the foresight to see runners up ahead of him and quickly punch it into them to transition on the counter attack.

    Casemiro has been a godsend for Ten Hag and Manchester United fans, who hope that the good performances long continue.

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    Liam Canning, Contributor

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  • Transfer Talk: Man United join Chelsea, Barcelona for Mexico’s Alvarez

    Transfer Talk: Man United join Chelsea, Barcelona for Mexico’s Alvarez

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    The summer transfer window is closed for the major leagues in Europe. However, with an eye on January, there’s plenty of gossip swirling about who’s moving where. Transfer Talk brings you all the latest buzz on rumours, comings, goings and, of course, done deals!

    TOP STORY: Man Utd eye Mexico’s Alvarez

    Manchester United have joined the list of top clubs who are eyeing Ajax Amsterdam midfielder Edson Alvarez with Chelsea and Barcelona also keeping tabs on the Mexico star midfielder, according to Calciomercato.

    Alvarez was strongly linked with a move to Chelsea in August with sources telling ESPN that the Blues made a €50 million bid to sign him before the summer transfer deadline. That bid was turned down by Ajax, but it now looks as though Chelsea are set to face significantly more competition for his signature when the winter window opens.

    Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has already acquired both Antony and Lisandro Martinez from his former club, and that could provide an advantage to the Red Devils with two of Alvarez’s former teammates making the switch to Old Trafford.

    Recent reports have also indicated that Barcelona see Alvarez — who has made 18 appearances for Ajax this season and is expected to anchor Mexico’s midfield at the World Cup — as a potential future successor for Sergio Busquets.

    – Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, MLS, more (U.S.)

    PAPER GOSSIP

    – Antonio Silva looks to be attracting more interest from around Europe, with Chelsea keeping tabs on the 18-year-old Benfica defender, according to Fabrizio Romano. Chelsea are also keen on RB Leipzig‘s Josko Gvardiol as the Blues remain in the market for a centre-back. Silva scored the opening goal on Tuesday night as Benfica defeated Juventus 4-3 in the Champions League.

    – Barcelona will be unable to contest for the signature of young Brazilian star Endrick until next summer, reports Sport. The Blaugrana are currently focusing on other areas of their squad to improve, and though they maintain interest in the 16-year-old Palmeiras forward, it looks as though they won’t be part of any race in the January transfer window. He has recently been linked with Paris Saint-Germain.

    – Arsenal have received a boost in their pursuit of Shakhtar Donetsk‘s Mykhailo Mudryk. Speaking over a potential move to the north London club, the 21-year-old forward revealed to CBS that he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to join Mikel Arteta’s side if they agreed a deal for his services. The Ukrainian side are reported to be looking for a fee in excess of €60m to part ways with him.

    – Chelsea considering a proposal for Newcastle United standout Bruno Guimaraes in the January transfer market, according to Goal. The 24-year-old midfielder has been been a star performer for Newcastle this season, who has also been linked with Real Madrid. It is reported that the Magpies are looking to offer him a new deal at St. James’ Park to ward off interest from other clubs.

    – Juventus could struggle to beat Arsenal for the signature of Lazio midfielder Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, reports Calciomercato. Arsenal are understood to be preparing a €60m offer that includes Albert Sambi Lokonga in an effort to bring Milinkovic-Savic from Rome to London, and the latest indicates that the Gunners are leading the Bianconeri in the race to sign the 27-year-old Serbia international.

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  • Three Players Manchester United Should Be Looking At Ahead Of The January Transfer Window

    Three Players Manchester United Should Be Looking At Ahead Of The January Transfer Window

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    While results have picked up for Erik Ten Hag’s new and improved Manchester United, there is always one eye locked on the next transfer window to reinforce the squad.

    Cristiano Ronaldo looks more certain than ever to leave the club coming into the winter months, crystallised by his off-field antics and regular cause for disruption.

    The Portugal international attempted to leave the club in the summer, hence not turning up once for pre-season, but a lack of suitors and Manchester United not willing to part ways with him forced the centre forward to remain put.

    With Ten Hag preferring Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford operating through the middle, the relationship with Ronaldo has strained further, resulting in very public passive aggressive tactics to undermine the new manager – such as walking down the tunnel before the game was finished against Tottenham Hotspur.

    Here are three players that Manchester United will pursuing January onwards:

    Victor Osimhen

    A player that has continually been growing with each season, Victor Osimhen is now one of the most talked about young centre forwards in Europe.

    Arriving from LOSC, the Napoli striker was signed for an impressed £65 million as a 21 year old. After an acclimatisation period in the south of Italy, the Nigerian centre forward has become one of the best players in Serie A.

    This season, Osimhen has been involved in six goal involvements – five goals, one assist – in nine appearances across all competitions; including the winner last weekend against AS Roma.

    With Ronaldo’s inevitable departure, it makes sense for Manchester United to move quickly, fighting off what would be any other potential suitors by trying to poach Osimhen in the January market.

    Given the high price that Napoli paid for the Nigeria international, it is likely that the Red Devils will have to fork out more than £70 million to secure his signature.

    While Rashford has filled in as the team’s number nine, it has been clear to see that Ten Hag lacks a natural goalscorer with energy in abundance. The Englishman’s finishing has been somewhat wasteful, and so the need to bring in an out-and-out striker is high on the priority list.

    Frenkie de Jong

    Manchester United’s coveted pursuit of Frenkie de Jong ultimately ended in disappointment as FC Barcelona kept their star midfielder past the summer window.

    It was clearly from the moment Ten Hag took over that his number one priority was De Jong with the club pulling out every stop they had to try and recruit him. Ultimately, there were too many complications in the way over deferred wages that prevented the transfer from going through, but that is not to say Man United will not try again.

    In came Casemiro and Christian Eriksen, both of whom have been absolutely excellent for Manchester United and revitalised their midfield. The question is now aimed at squad depth and having multiple world class players among the ranks.

    De Jong has been used sparingly in the Champions League, with Xavi preferring to go for a midfield three of Sergio Busquets, Gavi and Pedri, leaving the Dutchman left on the bench.

    Barcelona had agreed a deal with Manchester United for the transfer of de Jong, but the player was not to move until his deferred wages had been paid up by the Catalan club.

    With de Jong recognising that his minutes have been cut short this season, it might just be the final domino to fall for the Dutch international to find pastures new.

    Cody Gakpo

    Arguably Europe’s most talked about player, Cody Gakpo is a player that is in demand this winter.

    After nearly signing for both Manchester United and Leeds United on deadline day, Gakpo has started this season with the intent of making that career-defining move sooner rather than later.

    He has laid down a serious market both domestically and in the Europa League. The Dutch international has 18 goals and assists in just 11 Eredivisie matches – a quite remarkable effort given he occupies the left wing rather than the centre forward position.

    Nailed-on to be in Louis van Gaal’s final squad for next month’s World Cup, Gakpo’s stock is likely to continue to rise, which will be music to PSV Eindhoven’s ears with four years left on his current contract.

    A transfer fee is likely to be in-and-around the £50 million mark, which is already at least £15 million more than what Manchester United had all-but agreed with PSV earlier in the summer. The Red Devils pulled out as they had finally secured the services of former Ajax player Antony, but are likely to return in the future.

    The only downside of pursuing Gakpo is of course his more natural position of occupying th left wing, which Manchester United are rather stocked up on. If Ten Hag feels he can convert Gakpo to a more natural number nine, then it is a no brainer given his physical profile and goals record to date.

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    Liam Canning, Contributor

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