Elland Road's scheduled 40 per cent capacity rise clearly means the extension work will not be a quick job
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The idea of expanding Elland Road has been floated for many years but the 49 Enterprises seem serious about it.
Paraag Marathe
and co. wish to upgrade the stadium to hold 53,000 spectators when all is said and done, with work concentrated on the West Stand as well as the South Stand and North Stand. Obviously, this won’t be a quick job.
“There will probably be a couple of phases that ultimately take us to 53,000,” Leeds United chairman Marathe said last month. The 49ers chief told fans to expect further updates in due course, with timescales and start dates not yet clear.
He added: “We want to do it without compromising seats over the next couple of years. So it’s going to be a bit tricky but that’s our goal and we’re ploughing forward on all fronts.”
Clearly, that will elongate the process, but that is a price most will be willing to pay. Sanctioning a reduced capacity of the current 37,890 seating is not only less than ideal but actually unhelpful.
“Elland Road is a place that players and managers from other clubs don’t like playing at because it’s been called a cauldron or a hurricane of noise,” Marathe noted. Some of that would be lost if part of the ground was closed.
So how long will it take? At this early stage, all the variables make it hard to pin down but we can conjure an estimation from previous examples from elsewhere.
For Elland Road, the first phase alone would see the ground bounce up to a capacity of 47,000 - nearly a 9,000 seat jump. That increases to an almost 15,000-seat rise when all is said and done.
Elland Road presents a different kind of challenge given it is an expansion of a current structure, and that is why it is so difficult to predict timeframes.
Going from previous examples as a loose barometer, if all works are completed within three years, that’s some going.
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53,000 is more than SJP

(52,338).
Wembley 90,000
Old Trafford 75,653
London Stadium 62,500
THS 62,062
Anfield 61,276
Emirates 60,704
Etihad 55,097
New Elland Road
SJP
It is also more than every Scottish football stadium but one:
Celtic Park 60,832
New Elland Road
Hampden Park 52,025
(Murrayfield is Scotland's biggest stadium, at 67,144.)