[quote author=Farkmaster link=topic=41783.msg1198025#msg1198025 date=1287217146]
What is interesting to me is that anfield, while considered sacred ground, is not the same as Fenway in any way. There isn't the same sort of consensus that building a new stadium would be sacrilege. Anfield has gone through massive changes, much like Fenway, but not in such a way that it has kept any significant architectural essential character. From the outside it has no remarkable architectural features of any kind, and it's not in an area that anyone goes to for any reason other than a game. Its most defining features, the kop, has changed massively over the years, and there isn't anything different about it that couldn't be approximated elsewhere. Stuff like the shankly gates would be preserved in any sensible new build.
There isn't much there to preserve, other than some attachment to the location, and the ground. I'm not discounting that, but I don't think it's worth it.
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Great post and makes the point I have always stuck by, it's great to have history and it's great to be sentimental , but we have a greater responsibility to the future, yes of course we have to have an eye in the past when we progress that is only right, but future generations will not thank us for not moving forward because of our own sentimentality.
As Farky says Anfield is not an architectural master piece, far from it. It is what it is like so many of our traditional grounds, one that has evolved from people standing around a pitch into a hodgepodge of stands and facilities.
One of the beauties of the new design is that it paid homage to that, in that it was not a symmetrical bowl.
The fact that we are building so close and using the existing site sympathetically also fits in with our own feelings and links the past with the future.
As others have said there is no mad urgency as Anfield is far better than the vast majority of grounds in the country. Lets spend some money on the team and concentrate on that first.
regards
