Leeds United Elland Road expansion: 'Start digging', 49ers' promise, 'tens of millions' claim — YEP 6/12/24

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By Kyle Newbould, Jamie Kemble

Leeds United fans have been closely following the updates on the Elland Road situation

The latest Leeds United Elland Road expansion news spanning the last two years.

Graham Smyth ‘start digging’ comments

Graham Smyth believes Leeds United can get their Elland Road expansion plans in place so that spades can hit the ground once promotion is secured. Leeds announced exciting plans to redevelop their iconic stadium last month, with the intention of increasing the capacity to around 53,000 - a significant improvement on the current 37,645 maximum. A phased construction project is expected to focus on the North and West Stands in a bid to bring Elland Road in line with UEFA's Category 4 status, which is reserved for Europe’s elite grounds.

With a season-ticket waiting list of more than 20,000, Leeds would have no problem filling a 53,000-capacity stadium in the Championship but the financial challenges of continued second-tier football present an obvious risk, with revenue down massively compared to the Premier League. And the YEP’s chief football writer Smyth isn’t expecting any major development until promotion is secured, although there are ways for club chiefs to get the ball rolling beforehand.

“I think people will see it as positive news,” Smyth told the YEP’s Inside Elland Road podcast recently. “Not a lot of people are saying ‘this is stupendous’ and they’re not doing cartwheels and backflips. But it is more flesh on the bone and I think it's more of a commitment on record from the 49ers to say ‘we are doing this’.

“You don’t commit to spending £10m getting to the planning approval stage and then say ‘you know what, actually we don't fancy building the stadium’. They just don't strike me as those kinds of people. They are very very serious about stadium redevelopment. I can also understand fans saying spades in the ground please, timeframes and that's not there yet.

“It's difficult for them to put a timeframe on something when it largely is Premier League dependent. I don't see them increasing the capacity to 53,000 until Leeds are a Premier League club. I just don't see it. You can do all the work in the background and get it ready. So they don't have to do the work straight away but they can get everything ready to go so it’s literally Premier League football - go, start digging.”

49ers’ previous promise

Paraag Marathe is keen to preserve the personality and history of the Elland Road culture. In an interview with the BBC, Marathe said: “I’ll be honest with you, the main thing is to protect the magic and electricity that is in Elland Road. The answer then is [it] probably means that it’s more of a stadium expansion than a new stadium because I don’t want to take away from that.

“Players from the other 19 [Premier League] clubs, if they are going to list the three worst places that they want to play on the road for an away match, Elland Road is probably one, two or three for them. I don’t want to take that away.”

Leeds looking at ‘tens of millions’ to expand

The proposed Elland Road redevelopment could cost Leeds United ‘tens of millions’ of pounds. That’s according to football finance expert Daniel Plumley, who spoke with MOT Leeds News about the club’s stadium expansion plans.

“Look at the amount of money it is taking Everton to do a full new stadium, obviously the Spurs one was the most expensive in history. So, you’re talking hundreds of millions to do a full stadium, then you work off from there, so if it’s full stand reconstruction, you come down from those numbers but it is still significant amounts of money, certainly in the tens of millions for sure.”

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