I guess you have to be pragmatic. Ultimately, the airport, or any business, has to live by it's means. I'd love to extend my house with an additional wing and a granny flat at the bottom of the garden for guests. The thing is, I don't have the funds for it.
Now, the terminal extension or certainly the south side of it, doesn't look as good as i'd hoped. Floor to ceiling glazing would have looked good. The actual pier looks absolutely fine. It doesn't look cheap, the glass airbridges look the part and internally it looks like there is plenty of natural light and spacious. BKK, which I've transited many times looks very futuristic externally, internally it is very basic and looks cheap and tired in places. MAN was never going to be a glass palace, it simply doesn't have the funds to achieve that.
It's disappointing to hear about the leak, time will tell whether this is just an inevitable teething problem or a more fundamental issue. Theres nothing to suggest it's the latter yet.
Finally, it's irritating when you hear the comments "oh, Emirates won't stand for that" , "last thing they want to do is annoy Singapore" blah blah blah. Have you seen some of the airports they fly into ??? They will of course have their own stipulations of MAN but you will find that the some of the most demanding customers are the likes of easyJet, Jet 2 and Ryanair..... the airlines that use MAN a lot more than a few times a day.
I'm no Manchester Airport apologist, far from it, but some of you need to manage your expectations and also suspend judgement until more of the project is complete.