Club newsAnfield Road expansion update: 300-tonne roof truss lifted into place

Since September 2021, the construction work to bring 7,000 more supporters to Anfield has been taking shape impressively. New exclusive drone and timelapse footage in the video above shows the progress made during the first 10 months of the project.

With 12 months left of the build, hitting this milestone was hugely important ahead of the 2022-23 season, the last campaign during which the Reds will play home games in front of 54,000 supporters.

Preparatory work started in May by building the two steel towers. Last weekend the two 60ft haunches were lifted into place ready to sit either side of the truss.

It took 30 skilled engineers around 12 hours during record-breaking temperatures to install the truss using two 600-tonne crawler cranes to take the heavy lifting. The cranes work together to perform the difficult manoeuvre, positioning it onto the haunches - one crane controlled any movement ‘forward and backward’ and the other controlled ‘side-to-side’ movement.

When it was all aligned, the cranes held it in position until it could be bolted in place. The towers, haunches and truss are connected by a total of 25,000 bolts.

Paul Cuttill, VP of stadium operations at Liverpool Football Club, said: “We are delighted to see the roof truss lifted into place. This is one of the most challenging and complicated parts of the build. There has been a lot of planning involved and it took a few goes to get started due to the complexity of the lift.

“It’s a historical moment for the stadium and the club and a fantastic achievement. Huge thanks to the incredible team from our stadium and contractors to get this in place in record-breaking temperatures.”

This is the third major capital build project undertaken by LFC in recent years, following the rebuild of the Main Stand in 2016 and the opening of the state-of-the-art AXA Training Centre in November 2020.