Manchester United have defended plans for a new 100,000-capacity stadium, insisting it will be "a sanity, not vanity project" even though it could add to the club's debt. The plans, unveiled on Thursday, place the new ground 350 metres north-west of the current Old Trafford, with a previously stated working cost of around £2bn. This matters because United are already about £1.3bn in debt, and a sizeable group of supporters are worried about further borrowing being loaded onto the club.

Collette Roche, chief executive of the stadium project, said the final cost was uncertain given the stadium's unprecedented scale, and that funding could come from debt, equity, shares or outside investors, with selling naming rights also under consideration. She pointed to the club's cost-cutting drive under Sir Jim Ratcliffe — including about 450 redundancies — and her delivery of the Carrington training-ground project on time and budget. The design, likened by critics to a circus tent, is not set in stone. Trafford council's executive committee will decide on 20 July whether to approve the wider master plan, with an eight-week consultation to follow from 28 July, and United aiming to open the stadium by 2035.