Man Utd said they planned to build a new Old Trafford for the 2030/31 season when plans were unveiled last year.

There are 52 months until August 2030. That date is significant because Manchester United said they hoped to move into a new 100,000-seater Old Trafford for the 2030/31 season.

Last year, United unveiled ambitious plans for a state-of-the-art stadium at an event in London, but the timeframe for completing the project may also be ambitious.

There are no official deadlines, but Sir Jim Ratcliffe identified the 2030/31 season as the target. Ratcliffe will be 77 when that Premier League campaign begins. The British billionaire is a man in a hurry, and will see the new stadium as a legacy project in the city where he was born.

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For that ambition to be realised, there will need to be spades in the ground sooner rather than later. Tottenham left White Hart Lane in 2016, spent nearly three seasons at Wembley, and moved to their new 61,000-seater venue in 2019. Everton’s new stadium, the Hill Dickinson, took four years to build.

United must reach a deal to purchase the rail yard surrounding Old Trafford before they can push ahead with stadium plans. The land is owned by Freightliner, and the parties are yet to reach an agreement.

Last summer, reports claimed Freightliner valued the land at £350million, although Andy Burnham played down that figure, saying: “I think everyone should file that one away.”

The last update from a United spokesperson was: “While Manchester United owns a significant portion of land around Old Trafford, it is not all in a single, continuous block.

“To accommodate the scale of the proposed new stadium – including a canopy – and to avoid disruption to the existing stadium during construction, we are working to secure additional land.

“We’ve been engaged in constructive discussions with neighbouring landholders and are optimistic about reaching mutually agreeable terms in the coming months.”

The stadium design has been paused while United await an agreement on the Freightliner land. United said: “Early design work has been intentionally paused until we have greater clarity on land assembly and fan requirements. As with other aspects of the project, we encourage fans to treat speculative media reports with caution.

“We remain excited by the vision set out by Foster + Partners for a new stadium at the heart of a wider regeneration of the Old Trafford area.

“We always said this was a conceptual design, with more detailed architectural work to follow. While we remain keen to advance as quickly as possible, the timetable is subject to progress on land assembly and financing, which depends on key stakeholders working together.”

Burnham has suggested compulsory purchase powers could be used to acquire the space if a deal can not be agreed, but it’s understood United are “optimistic” of reaching a breakthrough.

The mayor of Greater Manchester is involved with the Old Trafford regeneration project – the land around the stadium – but he recently clashed with Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe claimed the United Kingdom has been “colonised” by immigrants during an interview about politics in Britain with Sky. He suggested the government needed to make “difficult” decisions, which he claimed his Ineos regime had made at Old Trafford. Ratcliffe received backlash.

Burnham was among the high-profile figures to call on Ratcliffe to apologise. “These comments go against everything for which Manchester has traditionally stood: a place where people of all races, faiths and none have pulled together over centuries to build our city and our institutions, including Manchester United,” he said.

There was a pop at the Glazers included in Burnham’s statement. “If any criticism is needed, it should be directed towards those who have offered little contribution to our life here and have instead spent years siphoning wealth out of one of our proudest institutions,” he added

Ratcliffe cosied up to Kier Stamer at Old Trafford in 2024 as talks over a new stadium gathered momentum. It made sense for Ratcliffe to forge political allies with a new 100,000-seater stadium in mind, and it remains to be seen whether his comments on immigration have weakened relationships.

How a new Old Trafford will be founded is another question. Ratcliffe floated the idea of taxpayers partly funding the £2billion project, saying: “People in the north pay their taxes and there is an argument you could think about a more ambitious project in the north which would be fitting for England, for the Champions League final or the FA Cup final.”

Burnham has previously stated that no public funding would be granted for the stadium itself, and he reiterated that stance to The Added Time Podcast. “Manchester United will be paying for the stadium. There will not be a penny of public money going into that,” he said.

United announced their financial figures for the second quarter at the end of February, and the numbers shockingly confirmed the club’s debt is close to reaching the £1.3billion mark.

In August, football finance blogger Swiss Ramble placed Everton and Tottenham above Manchester United in his debt league, but both of those clubs have borrowed to build new stadiums. United have calculated that a new Old Trafford would cost around £2billion.

United have not communicated how a new stadium will be funded. There is a lot to still work out.