:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45922698/465610654.0.jpg)
The first spade was only put in the ground at the beginning of December, but just three months later Anfield's redevelopment has progressed to the point where major visible changes are beginning to take shape. Until now, fans have been left to peer through cracks in the hoarding to see what might be going on, but over the last week the structural framing for the new Main Stand has gone up for all to see.
"We’ve been doing a lot of the foundation works and now we’re in the process of erecting the steel and that’s all coming up very quickly," said Andrew Parkinson, Liverpool's operations director. "We’re already at the stage where the new steel is as high as the existing Main Stand and that’s within a week since the steel arrived. As we get further and further, from game to game, people are going to see a big transformation in front of their eyes.
"From game to game it’s going to be a huge transformation to the whole site and I think now people will get a sense of the whole scale of it. Perhaps they haven’t had that but they will get that now."
Must Watch
No matter how many artist renderings get produced or construction animations get viewed, it's one thing to see projections of the new stadium plans and quite another to stand underneath the expanded physical structure. With a completion date scheduled for just before the beginning of the 2016-17 season, it will be some time before the stand's steel bones get fleshed out a bit more, but Parkinson reassured that for all the changes and modernizations taking place, Anfield will still feel like home for Liverpool fans.
"It’s also important that you feel you’re still at Anfield so while it’s a new stand it has to be very much in keeping with the rest of the stadium and feel that it’s at Anfield," he explained. "It’s complex in doing that but it’s really important that we do do that and it will be a key success factor in this delivery."
