The forgotten plans for Manchester's original 'Wembley of the North' and what it means for Ratcliffe vision

New Manchester United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe believes he can build a 100,000-seater replacement for Old Trafford, potentially using public funds. He wants it to be the 'Wembley of the North', capable of holding FA Cup and Champions League finals.

It's a bold - potentially unattainable - vision, but as Manchester City fans sing loudly, Old Trafford is falling down and it cannot continue as it is. Rebuilding the stadium has its well-publicised difficulties but to build a state-of-the-art arena of the size Ratcliffe wants, the cost will surely rival the £1billion spent by Tottenham on their rebuild project in the capital.

As well as cost, there is another issue. Manchester has already tried to build a 'Wembley of the North' with 80,000 seats. And they ended up with the Etihad Stadium.

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In the late 1980s Manchester bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games, proposing an 80,000 seater stadium on a greenfield site in West Manchester. Those Olympics were awarded to Atlanta instead, with Manchester's focus shifting to the 2000 games when the location for the proposed stadium moved east to Eastlands, a derelict area ripe for regeneration.

By 1992, with new government legislation for urban renewal opening up funds to purchase the site, plans were well under way, but Sydney handed awarded the 2000 Olympics and Manchester turned its attention to the 2002 Commonwealth Games. There was a proposal to the Millennium Commission for the stadium to become a Millennium Stadium but that was turned down. In 1995 Manchester won the