WE WENT to the Clock End at Highbury, picked up Craig Nayman, one of the corporate sales guys, and two girls, and walked round to the huge site at Ashburton Grove.
The five of us put on heavy boots, day-glo jackets and construction helmets, and we enjoyed a comprehensive tour of all four levels of the Emirates Stadium.
Not having studied the specifications, numbers or photos, I’m not an expert on this topic. All I can offer here is a subjective impression.
The inside of the new stadium is spectacular. It’s big but not high, only 20 metres higher than Highbury. The design is fabulous. The sightlines are fantastic, even from the back of the highest stand, where you are, of course, a long way from the pitch. The seats are super-comfortable and the leg-room is generous.
Entry by Smartcard, toilets everywhere, good bars and restaurants, and, crucially, you’ll be able to have a drink with friends sitting at the other end of the stadium.
You could say it’s a quantum leap, but it’s better than that.
As a place to watch football, the Emirates will the classiest stadium in the world.
Highbury is the smallest pitch in the league but this will be the sixth biggest pitch in Europe, the same size as the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. All 12 pitches at Colney will be re-drawn to that size.
There were no seats or pitch when we were there. The playing area was just tons of earth being shoved around by seven bulldozers and a baby steamroller. The seats will be installed by April and pitch will be seeded like Highbury, not turfed.
The Wow! factor will be massive and ongoing.
When you go there you’ll think, “Bloody hell ! This is fantastic!” The second, third and fourth time you’ll still think, “Crikey!” When players see it they will think “Wow! I wanna play here. I want my Mum and Dad to see me play here.”
ARSENE WENGER’S luxury training ground has already convinced players to sign and it’s good enough to be rented to Brazil when they visit England.
The Emirates Stadium will sign players on its own.
When footballers see the arena, the size of the crowd, the facilities, the luxurious dressing room with plasma TV screens for half-time tactical pointers, they will want to play for Arsenal. They won’t squabble about another five grand a week, they’ll just say, “Where do I sign?”
Good players have wanted to play for Arsenal for years. Now great players and their agents will queue up.
So that was my impression : the Emirates Stadium will be huge pleasure palace, a gigantic cash-generating machine, and a magnificent vindication of an ambitious executive-manager who says Arsenal can be the biggest club in the world.
Some of us said all along : Yes, you CAN borrow £260 million and regenerate a rundown urban area. If you’ve been reading ANR for the last four years, and many have, you know that.
The task has been very complicated, it’s been stamina-sapping, it’s been fraught with administrative and human hassles, it’s needed 2,000 legal documents on the finance alone, but it has happened. So the team off the field, led by Danny Fiszman, Ken Friar and Keith Edelman, have achieved a miracle.
It took four years to persuade six banks to put up the money, and two years to build, but it’s now a reality.
Only Arsenal, of all the clubs in the world, could have done this, and only Arsenal could pay back £260 million quite easily from their own resources.
I’m not the kind of person who gets excited by buildings, but I have to say that the Emirates Stadium is amazing.
When Arsenal fans get inside the big glass spaceship in August, they will be gobsmacked.
IT WAS AN INTERESTING AFTERNOON which left me with two questions.
Will there be atmosphere?
And will the club treat people decently?
If they bombard supporters with ads on the Jumbotrons for an hour before kick-off, no atmosphere can develop.I can’t write a dissertation this morning, describing what atmosphere is.But I’m sure that the Jumbotrons helped to create Highbury the Library.
Arsenal will be rich and powerful and successful. They will be giants, I think. And the bigger you are, the more you bully people.
So that is a big danger.That is, in fact, the biggest test for the club now.They can play stylish football, draw big crowds, win trophies and make money. All that will come.
ARSENAL FC has done pretty well over the decades, treating fans quite well, better than Spurs or Chelsea. It’s been a better club than Spurs or Chelsea because the people who run it have been better people than those who run Spurs or Chelsea. I hope that continues.
It is clear to me that, in future, Arsenal could bully a lot of people and get away with it.
But I hope they treat people decently. We’ll see.