Liverpool's Anfield Road Stand upper tier will finally open for Man Utd visit

Four months later than hoped, Liverpool will finally open the top tier of the new Anfield Road Stand for this weekend's crunch fixture with Manchester United - with Mail Sport given a behind-the-scenes tour of the development project.

It resembled more of a building site with just over a week until the first match, but Liverpool's stadium staff have been working around the clock to get the work done.

Upon leaving Goodison Park at around 11.30pm on Thursday, the lights were still on around the construction offices.

Liverpool were originally hoping to open the new stand for the first home game of the season against Bournemouth - having asked to play an away match in the opening weekend - but that date was pushed back several times due to complications.

The biggest setback came when Buckingham Group, the original contractors, went into financial administration. It left Liverpool scrambling to find another constructor and Rayner Rowen stepped up to complete the works.

Buckingham's contract was not given to them lightly, with Liverpool conducting research into some of their other projects first, which included work at Brighton's Amex Stadium, Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium and a new stand at The Oval cricket ground in south London.

The Russian war on Ukraine plus Brexit led to bigger costs for timber and Buckingham Group also failed to complete works on developments to Fulham's Craven Cottage, with the new Riverside Stand going way over budget and works taking longer than expected to complete.

Rayner Rowen parked their construction site at the top of the car park that adorns Stanley Park and slowly installed new seats and cladding to take Anfield's capacity to 61,000, though the true attendance figure will fall just shy of