Manchester United suspends plans for new training centre

• Manchester United has suspended plans to build a new training facility centre from the ground
• The Premier League side has instead opted to look at a possibility of expanding the current training ground, the Carrington Training Facility
• The Carrington ground has been in use by the club since the year 2000 as their main training complex

Manchester United are reported to have ‘abandoned a preliminary plan’ to build a brand new training centre over the eye-watering cost of simply acquiring the land they are interested in.

United famously trained at The Cliff for almost half a century from 1951 – the first team would train at Old Trafford before that – until moving to their current Carrington base in the year 2000.

It has been one of the leading training facilities in world football over the years and was even expanded in 2013 when a new in-house medical and sports science centre was opened on-site.

But with other rival clubs including neighbours Manchester City improving their own operations and the Carrington facility now over 20 years old, the time has come to take action to ensure United don’t fall further behind.

An ariel view of the Carrington grounds, Manchester United training centre. | PHOTO: Getty Images |

One option is to build a brand new training centre from the ground up. But The Sun reports that having identified a potential site at the Tatton Estate near Knutsford in Cheshire, United have been put off by the ‘prohibitive’ cost of buying the land in the first place.

It is alleged that the club would have to spend tens of millions before any of the work on building what would be a £200m ($267m) facility could even begin. It, therefore, doesn’t come across as cost-effective.

Instead, United are expected to begin trying to buy up more land around the existing Carrington site, which was itself farmland prior to the project in the late 1990s.

The club has already appointed Mags Mernagh, who previously helped deliver Leicester’s new £130m training centre, as Programme Director for Carrington development.

United executives have continued to preach in recent months a more holistic approach, knitting together the development of the men’s, women’s and academy teams more closely than before.

Other clubs that have improved their training grounds include Manchester City’s Etihad Campus, Chelsea’s Cobham and Arsenal’s London Colney.