History
In the days before all-seater stadia, the Stretford End was the main standing area of the ground, accommodating around 20,000 fans. The last game played in front of the terrace was the final game of the 1991–92 season, a 3–1 win over Tottenham Hotspur on 2 May 1992.
The terrace was demolished during the 1992 close-season and replaced with a £10 million all-seater cantilever stand by the end of the 1992–93 season, giving Old Trafford an all-seater stadium to comply with the Taylor Report (which required all Premier League and Division One clubs to have all-seater stadia by the start of the 1994–95 season), and its name was officially changed to "West Stand", although it is still often referred to as the Stretford End and even has white seats spelling the name out.
The redevelopment of the Stretford End was first proposed in mid-1989 when chairman Martin Edwards was proposing to sell the club and was willing to sell his shares for £10 million and pledge £10 million to any new owner for the redevelopment of the Stretford End.
For the 2000–01 season, a second tier of seating was added. As well as hosting a number of executive boxes, the first tier of the West Stand is now partly taken up by the family seating area. At the corner with the South Stand is the players' tunnel.
Only Denis Law and Eric Cantona have reached the status of "King of the Stretford End" among the United faithful, the former for his formidable goal record and the latter for his charisma and aura.
Following Manchester United's ending of its sponsorship deal with Vodafone, the name of the next sponsor, AIG, was not displayed in the seats. The 'Nike Swoosh' was relocated to the East Stand and the words "Stretford End" were spelled out with white seats in the West Stand.
Read more about this topic: Stretford End
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)