| The 1995-96 season was a significant moment for football in Manchester. United won the Double as their hapless neighbours, City, were relegated in fittingly farcical circumstances. Off the field (or adjacent to it, at least), United were gold-plating their dominance with the completion of a new North Stand that made Old Trafford the biggest club stadium in England. And in what must have felt like a footnote at the time, Manchester was awarded the 2002 Commonwealth Games, with a bid based around a new, purpose-built stadium on a brownfield site. Fast-forward three decades, and the Etihad is now home to English football’s dominant force, an all-conquering team who play in sky blue. It’s been a journey that would take some explaining to a tracksuited, gum-chewing Alex Ferguson if you were to time-travel back to the mid-90s in search of affordable Oasis tickets. Old Trafford’s North Stand is now the Sir Alex Ferguson stand, but not much else has changed at United’s once-palatial home since their glory days. The last major upgrade works were in 2006 and the stadium has entered a post-industrial decline that dovetails with the team’s waning fortunes. One architect looking into United’s proposed regeneration plans had this to say about the former Theatre of Dreams: “Wiring, electrical installation ... everything is approaching the end of its useful life.” So, about this regeneration. An idea mothballed under the Glazers’ full ownership sprang back to life almost as soon as Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe strutted into reception and told several hundred orderlies to clear their desks. The new minority owner’s vision is big and bold – “The Wembley of the North” – but lacking granular detail, such as: 1) whether it includes a new stadium, 2) what said stadium might look like, and 3) who is going to pay for it. We got some answers on Monday: 1) probably, 2) a giant throat lozenge, and 3) not us, obviously, but not you guys either, we promise. At a low-key opening pitch in (you’ll like this) Liverpool, the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and United’s official decline documenter, Gary Neville, unveiled the kind of 3D city-planning map once seen in your local library, with the bright red ‘Strepsil End’ plonked in the middle of it. An accompanying video offered a few more glimpses of a gaudy red facade, plastered with a club crest visible from space – but the focus was on the surrounding area, montages of dark satanic mills reborn into Pret-laden plazas as words like COMMERCIAL and REGENERATION floated in the ether. One word conspicuous by its absence: FOOTBALL. Maybe in the circumstances, that’s for the best. After all, the most memorable visions for new stadiums are those that leave reality far behind. Who could forget Portsmouth’s floating gold toilet, a CGI symbol of the ruinous largesse that would soon flush the club down to League Two? Then there’s Chelsea, who have toyed with steampunk fantasies at both Battersea Power Station and a new brick-clad Stamford Bridge. By 2030, Nicolas Jackson will only have three years left on his contract and the World Cup final could be played in a giant Center Parcs! All of which makes Monday’s sizzling chat about urban regeneration and freight rail relocation, and even the plan to keep Old Trafford as a scaled-down living museum, seem faintly sensible. At the end of the day, Ratcliffe is flexible – he just wants a big, modern football stadium that he doesn’t have to pay for. And just a couple of miles up the road from Monday’s big unveiling, there’s a reminder that quirky new grounds are fun until you actually have to build them. | 