Premier League club announce plans to overtake six rivals with multi-million stadium upgrade.

Nottingham Forest have revealed plans to revamp the City Ground, including increasing its capacity to around 52,000.

The Reds announced the idea on Thursday, indicating that they intend to begin a massive project next summer that will revamp three of their four stands.

The City Ground is located on the banks of the River Trent

Forest has played their home games in the historic stadium since 1898 and has shown a desire to remain there.

However, owner Evangelos Marinakis has made no secret of his desire to expand the club’s present capacity of 30,404 as he seeks to take it to new heights.

And the recently disclosed initiative would accomplish exactly that, with considerable work being done to make the stadium comparable with other Premier League stadiums.

What is the plan for the City Ground?

In the initial phase, the project would boost capacity from 31,000 to 45,000. A further refurbishment of the legendary Brian Clough Stand might add up to 7,000 more seats, boosting the overall capacity to 52,000.

Forest presented their suggested ideas at an event on Thursday, receiving support from East Midlands Mayor Claire Ward.

They will submit their official plans to Rushcliffe Borough Council on December 15th. In the interim, Forest will offer two drop-in sessions on Friday and Saturday for fans, local people, and stakeholders to learn more about the plans.

The latest update on the big project comes after the club announced last month that it has hired KSS Group to supervise it.

These are the same architects who designed the Anfield expansion and worked on Liverpool and Leicester’s new training facilities.

And the architects appear to have even grander ambitions for the City Ground than the club’s first expansion plans, which were disclosed six and a half years earlier.

Part of project includes a new 58-metre Peter Taylor stand with 1500 additional seats than the one at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge.

Once completed, the stand will have a capacity of 15,000 seats, which is 4,000 higher than the entire capacity of Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium.

Filling in the corners at both ends of the Trent End is also planned, which will result in an additional 5,000 seats.

The actual cost of Forest’s project is now unknown, although their earlier plan to enlarge only the Peter Taylor Stand, authorised in June, was anticipated to cost over £130 million alone.

It is reasonable to expect that the recently disclosed plans will result in a large increase in this figure.

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How would the new City Ground compare to other Premier League stadiums?

If the ambitious new proposal is approved, the City Ground will become one of the Premier League’s largest venues.

Forest’s home ground currently ranks 15th among top-flight stadiums in terms of capacity.

The East Midlands arena, which seats little over 30,000 people, is just slightly larger than Bournemouth, Brentford, Burnley, Crystal Palace, and Fulham’s stadiums.

However, this would change substantially with the building of approximately 22,000 more seats at the City Ground, which would push it past six other venues.

Wolves (31,750), Brighton (31,876), and Leeds’ Elland Road (37,890) are among the clubs whose capacity would be dwarfed by Forest’s new stadium.

Chelsea would also be affected by the extension, as their renowned Stamford Bridge has a capacity of 41,631.

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Aston Villa and Sunderland would be similarly able to accommodate 42,900 and 48,700 fans, respectively, at Villa Park and the Stadium of Light.

With the precise capacity of the new City Ground still unknown, it is possible that it will rank even higher among Premier League stadiums.

Newcastle’s St James’ Park and Everton’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium have capacities of up to 52,000 people.

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