The answer to Sir Jim Ratcliffe's Wembley of the north plan already exists - he just won't like it

Sir Jim Ratcliffe's plea for public funding to help him build a 'stadium for the north' has so far got little reaction from other football clubs in the region, but if it ever threatened to turn into a reality it's not hard to imagine one or two grumbles emerging.

It's been a fairly cynical ploy from Ratcliffe to try and find funding to redevelop Old Trafford and as bold as he's been in trying to describe it as a 'Wembley of the north', the biggest and perhaps only beneficiary of such a project would be Manchester United.

"The north-west of England has a greater concentration of major football clubs than anywhere else in the world, yet we don’t have a stadium on the scale of Wembley, the Nou Camp or Bernabeu," said Ratcliffe last week.

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"We will not be able to change that on our own, which is why this task force is so important to help us seize this once-in-a-century opportunity."

Ignoring for a while the fact that in capacity terms, Old Trafford is already that stadium, it's just been neglected by the owners that Ratcliffe has now cosied up with, there is also the debate over whether it is really accurate.

When Everton move into their new Bramley Moore home and when Manchester City's Etihad redevelopment is completed for the start of the 2025/26 season, Manchester and Liverpool will have four football stadiums with a capacity of more than 50,000 and three with a capacity of more than 60,000. Does it need public funding to build another? That is a question that doesn't need answering.

Part of Ratcliffe's pitch is to give the north a stadium that can host a Champions League final