Manchester United have begun to make summer upgrades to Old Trafford ahead of the new season.
There is currently a screen erected beside the Megastore at Old Trafford, which prevents public access to the turnstile area beneath the North East corner.
United have started painting work as part of their ‘regular summer upgrades’ in preparation for the new season and the screen was up due to existing paint being sandblasted off.
The South West Quad and North West Quad will be given a new lick of paint and a rubbish skip was spotted outside the away team turnstiles near the Munich Tunnel.
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A poster showing Lisandro Martinez and United women’s player Katie Zelem was removed on the East Stand glass just a few weeks ago ahead of the summer changes.
Old Trafford has been a prominent talking point since Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s acquisition of a minority stake and plans are underway to revamp or rebuild.
Although Old Trafford was once a state-of-the-art stadium, it has fallen behind in the last 10 years and there were shocking scenes when United lost 1-0 against Arsenal on May 12 when a deluge of rain hit Manchester and leaked into the ground, descending over seats.
The club said 1.6 inches of rain came down in the two hours after the final whistle, which is more than half of the amount that had fallen on Old Trafford throughout the whole of May 2023.
United sources privately conceded ‘some parts of the stadium struggled to cope’ but reiterated that Ratcliffe has created an Old Trafford task force to address such issues.
It’s understood the task force will conclude their findings by the end of the summer and the early expectation is that will come no later than the end of July.
Once the best course of action, whether to revamp or rebuild, is decided and the implications for the regeneration project are considered, there will be movement.
In February, Ratcliffe declared his preference to rebuild Old Trafford and said: “In an ideal world, I think it’s a no-brainer, a stadium of the north, which would be a world-class stadium where England could play and you could have the FA Cup final and it’s not all centred around the south of England.
“So in an ideal world, absolutely, that’s where I would be, but you’ve got to be practical about life. In broad terms, a refurb is one [billion] and a new stadium — both of these would include the campus so, you know, the museum’s c**p and the shop is too small and you’d have the Xbox thing for entertaining the fans.
“So in other words, the fans could come there and do some stuff. So include the campus in both cases, in very simple terms you are talking about one versus two [billion].
“I think the refurb would take longer than the new one because it’s more complicated because obviously you’re building and you have to build over a main railway line which is quite complicated and expensive.”