Manchester United are 18th in the Premier League. That is not where anyone at Old Trafford expected to be on 10 November, and after Nottingham Forest beat Manchester City on 7 November the club slipped into the relegation zone at this stage of a season for the first time in four decades.

The off-pitch picture is not much more comfortable. The club’s flagship project, a £2bn, 100,000-seat replacement for Old Trafford around 350 metres north-west of the current ground, has drawn a steady drumbeat of warnings from football finance and construction specialists that it is years from reality, and possibly from the budget it has been sold on.

‘A bit rubbish’, says the finance expert

Football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire has been among the loudest sceptics of the headline capacity. Speaking on the Price of Football podcast, he questioned the whole 100,000-seat ambition, arguing that once hospitality, corporate suites and circulation are carved out, the final 10,000 seats become hugely expensive to build and, for many fans, deliver a poor view.

“100,000-seater stadiums are a bit rubbish,” Maguire said on the podcast, dismissing the target capacity as a vanity exercise and pointing to the London Stadium as a cautionary tale on sightlines.

Read also: Geraint Thomas puts Netcompany INEOS at 20 percent of its former self

The money is the other sore point. Finance commentator Stefan Borson has called the project “very, very difficult to fund for Manchester United”, and an industry source cited by the Manchester Evening News earlier this year said the £2bn figure was optimistic and that the final number could run considerably higher. The distinctive tent-style roof alone has been estimated at around £300m.

Planning application not expected before late 2027

The club has secured the 25-acre site and finished a public consultation on the wider regeneration masterplan on 22 September. That masterplan is due to return to Trafford Council for adoption this autumn. Only once it is cleared does the club move to a formal planning application for the stadium itself, and that is not expected before late 2027 or 2028.

Construction is then projected to take four to five years, with an additional one-to-two-year preparation phase before ground is broken. Lord Sebastian Coe, who chairs the government’s regeneration taskforce for the area, has acknowledged publicly that “the timescale of the project is slightly uncertain at the moment”.

Collette Roche, chief executive of the club’s stadium development company, has pitched the same numbers more positively, telling supporters that the construction phase alone was always going to take “between four and five years”.

Read also: Scott McTominay reveals he had his heart shocked back into rhythm two days before World Cup

The on-pitch deadline is sooner

Head coach Michael Carrick, who took over in January, has one win from his first 10 Premier League matches of the season, and the club’s board has reportedly held two internal meetings about his future during the November international break.

United return from the break away to Liverpool on 22 November.

Read also: Eugenio Chacarra 534 points clear as McIlroy chases Montgomerie’s record in Dubai