'Our fans deserve to see a team that they can be proud of'
- Published
Manchester United chief executive Omar Berrada has been answering questions following the club's announcement of plans to build a new £2bn stadium.
How do we go from the club running out of money to a new £2bn stadium?
The way the club was tracking, with all the losses that have been accumulated - more than £300m in the past five years - was not sustainable. So all the plans we've been putting in place over the last months really address the short-term issue, which is that the club was losing money.
Once we stop losing money, we then put ourselves in the best financial position to continue investing in our team and also to allow us to be able to have the ambition to build a new stadium.
Arsenal and Spurs weren't competitive while or after building new stadia - is there a danger that you can't deliver the stadium and a world-class team?
That is a risk. Clearly it's something we want to avoid.
We don't want to inhibit our ability to invest in the team, for us to continue being competitive while we are building a new stadium.
There's various ways around that and one of the things we are looking at is to shorten the construction timelines so we can have a new stadium within five years. That's our ambition.
In the meantime, by getting our finances back in order and becoming profitable, we believe that we can be very competitive.
The big, big benefit that this club has is that it has the biggest fanbase in the world and therefore the ability to be the number one in terms of revenues that it generates.
Could this project unlock the future for the club to be the richest one in the world all over again?
It's clear that our ambition is to have the best team in the world with the best stadium and most iconic stadium in the world. We want to have some of the best players in the world playing in front of our fans.
Our fans deserve to see a team that they can be proud of, that they can connect with, and to be able to do that in an amazing venue, like the one that we've shown today.