Premier League club Liverpool have confirmed that construction of the upper tier of their new Anfield Road Stand will be delayed until the new year.
It had first been expected that the whole stand, including the newly built upper tier, would be finished and open in time for the start of this season but that was delayed until the end of the calendar year a couple of months ago.
Now, the project which includes increasing the overall capacity of Anfield to over 60,000 and will cost around £80 million, will not be concluded until the start of 2024 at the earliest.
The club’s chief executive, Billy Hogan, who became the CEO in 2020 after being the media director at the club since 2012, has not committed to a date on when the stand will be completed, either, with the 43-year-old American saying:
“Rayner Rowen really needs the time to complete the information-gathering before we commit to any new project timeline.”
Anfield, which was built and opened in 1884, has been renovated on 13 occasions with this latest redevelopment of the ground beginning in 2021. It is the second renovation under the ownership of Fenway Sports Group (FSG) after the Main Stand went under a similar rebuild to the new Anfield Road Stand between 2014 and 2016.
The current capacity of the ground is 54,074 but this most recent upgrade will take that to 61,000 in total. That would keep it as the fifth biggest stadium in the Premier League, behind the London Stadium, Emirates Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Old Trafford.
The stadium was recently overlooked as a host venue for UEFA Euro 2028 with the new Everton Stadium, on the Bramley-Moore Docks site, being preferred for the city of Liverpool due to the pitch dimensions not meeting UEFA standards for a major international tournament.
