In August, as Liverpool's international cast of multimillion-pound football stars prepared to kick off the new season, work on the club's new stadium ground to a halt. The cause? Lack of funding. The club said the scheme had been affected by "global market conditions". If the news sent a jolt of panic through the stadium-building market, which has seen grand new arenas rise from Southampton to Sunderland over the past decade on the back of lucrative sponsorship deals and foreign investment, then events in Manchester a couple of weeks later may have confused the picture further. The acquisition of Manchester City by the Abu Dhabi government shows that the super-wealthy are still drawn to British football. So is the market for new stadiums still full of Champions League potential or is it heading to the bottom of the Conference?
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