Cash machine: A new Manchester United stadium isn't about regeneration and never will be

The roof of the proposed new Manchester United stadium has three points, which is more than can often be said for the team who will play underneath it.

- Jonathan Liew

The roof of the proposed new Manchester United stadium has three points, which is more than can often be said for the team who will play underneath it. According to Nigel Dancey of the architectural firm Foster + Partners, the three giant masts will "create a distinctive presence on the skyline", presumably in the same way that Roy Keane created a distinctive presence on Alf-Inge Haaland's knee.

But of course aesthetic quibbles are the least of our concerns here. If United want to erect a giant plastic canopy over their new 100,000-seat stadium in a way that evokes a chicken being wrapped before roasting, then who are we to demur? The more pressing question - as someone who, unlike part-owner Jim Ratcliffe, still pays income tax in this country - is what exactly the rest of us are getting out of this.

Why knock down the biggest club stadium in the UK, the fifth biggest in Europe? Why not refurbish a venue that already generates plenty of revenue? Indeed, why even unveil this project now, before a single penny of funding for this £2bn project has been secured?

On the last of these at least, United's chief operating officer, Collette Roche, had this to say. "Until you articulate the mission and show the art of the possible, nobody takes you seriously," she said at the MIPIM property trade show in Cannes, where United were pitching for external investment. And, of course, for a club drowning in debt, laying off staff, projecting the redevelopment as a shiny infrastructure project is the only feasible way of unlocking the public money that will turn New Trafford into an effortless cash machine.