Liverpool’s CEO Billy Hogan has stated that there will be a delay to the opening of the new Anfield Road end and that the Aston Villa match will see the same capacity as the Reds’ first home game last Saturday against Bournemouth.
Work to complete the top tier of the stand ceased last week when it was announced that contractor Buckingham Group had filed a notice to appoint administrators and it meant that Liverpool’s match against Bournemouth was played with that section of the stadium entirely closed, resulting in an attendance of under 50,000 and leaving many fans without tickets to the game.
Jurgen Klopp’s men will next be at Anfield on September 3, when they host Aston Villa in the Premier League and there is bad news for fans, as the capacity will be the same according to the Reds’ CEO.
Billy Hogan provides the latest on the new Anfield Road End
Providing an update on the situation regarding the new stand, Billy Hogan said via This is Anfield: “Effectively major work stopped on the site on Thursday morning after the announcement so clearly that impacts all of our planning.
“Timing, obviously, is incredibly fluid right now, there’s a lot of uncertainty around where we are and obviously in time that will become more clear.
“It’s important that we don’t want to set any false expectations. We wanted to make sure that we provided an update.
“We announced a couple of weeks ago that we were going to be working through a phased opening [and] that plan remains, obviously.”
“We will continue to provide updates as we have them and we will be able to provide more clarity over the coming weeks on the timescales to complete the project,” the Liverpool CEO continued.
“Just to speak plainly, we are in a bit of a holding pattern right now based on the news that we got on Thursday and that needs to reach its conclusion before we can truly start to take the next steps.
“But if Buckingham does enter into administration then we’ll need to address any delays that may arise from completing the new stand as a result of that.”