Etihad Stadium increase??

[casualdeyna]

I remember reading when we moved to COMS/Etihad an interview with Alistair MacIntosh in the City mag, and one of the things he was asked about was "Is the stadium built with the idea of future expansion". He catagorically said no and said because of the design of the stadium (presume the one piece roof) it isn't really feasible to increase the capacity, but 48,000 was envisioned to be more than enough capacity for us.

That was all before Mansour of course, and I'm not saying it is impossible to increase capacity, but it will be extremely difficult and very, very expensive. Makes me laugh reading some people saying about the North and South stands being built in a way we can "throw" another tier on top, as according to MacIntosh when we moved it is total nonsense. The only man rich enough to probably do it is Mansour, but it will cost that much and be that difficult I'm sure he'll wait until Etihad campus is fully up and running and until we are regularly in Champions League

 

[DontLookBackInAnger]

forgive me if I'm wrong...... but wasn't one end open for the Commonwealth
Games, if thats the case it can't be a single roof design as part of it was added later!

 

[casualdeyna]

forgive me if I'm wrong...... but wasn't one end open for the Commonwealth
Games, if thats the case it can't be a single roof design as part of it was added later!

haha, I thought that after I wrote that down!

Honestly though, the Alistair MacIntosh article was in the City mag and I definitely remember reading it is designed for 48,000 only as it was one of the things I was interested in as I was delusional at the time (always have been!) that we'd be the biggest club in the world one day and would need a bigger stadium

 

[Metal Biker]

forgive me if I'm wrong...... but wasn't one end open for the Commonwealth
Games, if thats the case it can't be a single roof design as part of it was added later!

Someone touched on this before when it was asked. The roof wasn't in place for the Commonwealth Games but the supports for the roof were. The whole roof is like a suspension bridge thingy so when one side fails the whole thing does.

It would require the WHOLE roof coming off (i think) otherwise it would be structurally unsound. So a bit of a bigger job than we envisage.

Of course i'm only going off what this builder bloke said, i have virtually no idea as to how it works. ;)

 

[Dubai Blue]

forgive me if I'm wrong...... but wasn't one end open for the Commonwealth
Games, if thats the case it can't be a single roof design as part of it was added later!

While it was an open end, the structure of the roof was already in place; it just didn't have the cladding on it.

 

[DontLookBackInAnger]

forgive me if I'm wrong...... but wasn't one end open for the Commonwealth
Games, if thats the case it can't be a single roof design as part of it was added later!

Someone touched on this before when it was asked. The roof wasn't in place for the Commonwealth Games but the supports for the roof were. The whole roof is like a suspension bridge thingy so when one side fails the whole thing does.

It would require the WHOLE roof coming off (i think) otherwise it would be structurally unsound. So a bit of a bigger job than we envisage.

Of course i'm only going off what this builder bloke said, i have virtually no idea as to how it works. ;)

I see so when people say the roof has to come off, they really mean the supports would have to be moved...

 

[M18CTID]

We are pretty much selling out for all our league games and i can only see that continuing. So to plan ahead for an increased capacity, right now, would be a pretty sensible thing to do in my opinion. United's av attendance has increased by around 37k in 20yrs. With Sheikh Mansour's wealth and future plans for City, i'm pretty confident that a much quicker increase in average attendances can be achieved.

Quite right mate. Some people on here just have no vision whatever. They think Utd always had 75,000, and they cant fathom that we are planning for 3, 5 10 years down the line, not building so that it would be increased to 60,000 for the Villa game!!

And when people mention cup games, Europe crowds etc... the comparison with Utd is even more positive. Even though they had a support similar, in terms of average League attendance, in the early 90s to City's today, their European crowds were often lower than City's are at present. In fact Utd's 19k V Torpedo Moscow (Gary Neville's debut) is lower than any European crowd City have ever had at home.

Of course, to some extent that may seem irrelevant, but it does show that one or two 'low' cup crowds should not stand in the way of the ambition of the planning.

Shhhhhhhh - the Rags don't like to be reminded of that! Seriously though, that was a bizarrely low crowd for a club of United's size and stature (even though it was in keeping with them not selling out many of their European games at the time) - it was at the start of the first PL season and while they hadn't broken their 26 year league title duck at that point, they had started to win trophies under Ferguson and had been pipped to the title by Leeds the previous season.

I totally agree that we should be looking to expand now and see where it takes us. Every game that is a sell-out is losing money in terms of lost revenue if the ground has a bigger capacity. Plus the costs attributed to stadium expansion are excluded from the FFP regs.