by Alex Fynn
Arsenal’s was a business plan involving hundreds of millions of pounds reliant on the miracles of a middle-aged man, contractually committed to the club for a mere 15 further months. And the primary miracle required was annual qualification for the UEFA’s blue riband competition on comparatively modest expenditure on player transfers for a leading Premier League outfit. Alex Ferguson, on the other hand, had no such restrictions. But in another way the two rivals shared the same burden. To gain possession of United, the Glazers took the most profitable football club in the world and plunged it into debt. And the operation can only be sustained by continued success on the field. Arsenal had gone into debt to secure its future, United as a consequence of a change of ownership. The long-term advantage of Arsenal’s position is already apparent as the stadium has enabled it to challenge United in terms of net assets. However, the anticipated enormous growth in Arsenal’s matchday income would only start to eat away at the debili tating interest charges if, as an American might put it, the fans got ‘more bang for their buck’ in terms of entertainment. The board banked on the manager to ensure ‘house full’ notices irrespective of trophies won, a far cry from the days of ‘One-nil to the Arsenal’ and an indication of the dramatic change in image brought about by Wenger.
Edelman’s statement about financial models and revenue streams was not the terminology of a fan, but the new managing director was not employed to curry favour amidst the rank and file, despite personal protestations to the contrary. He never connected with the supporters in the natural way that David Dein did, because he simply could not relate to their own experiences as long-time followers of the team. The introduction of a new club crest in 2002 (devised primarily to sidestep an ongoing legal case concerned with copyright infringement of previous versions) said it all to the fans. The way the design was conceived displayed a lack of appreciation of the history and tradition such symbols and logos conveyed. When it was first presented to the fans, paraded around Highbury, it was roundly booed by all four sides of the ground. So the fact that their new stadium would be known by the name of an airline was seen by the fans as just the most salient example of the board failing to take into account their views.
The Arsenal supporters’ disquiet would have been more pronounced if they had realised that Arsène Wenger was receiving inadequate funds to keep his team at the same competitive level, and that lean times – in terms of trophies – were unavoidable. The manager had his budget, but a substantial portion of his transfer spending would have to be funded by his own aptitude to get good prices for the players going out the door. And on this level, the income raised from the sale of the academy-developed youngsters who failed to hold down a first-team spot became almost as important as the higher sums picked up for the likes of Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry when the manager con sidered they were expendable. Wenger’s skill in the transfer market had become a necessity rather than the agreeable bonus of his earlier days. Together with unearthing talent – the “diamonds in the dust” as David Dein fondly calls the manager’s best discoveries – this was now the only way Wenger could keep up with his peers. His judgment on new prospects – and who he could afford to dispense with – assumed an unnatural importance, and begged the question of what would have happened if the great talent scout had decided to go before the new stadium was built. Certainly, the board proceeded and still do on the assumption that the manager will be around for the foreseeable future. “We certainly don’t have a plan B,” said Peter Hill-Wood. “So I don’t think about it [Wenger leaving]. The only thing I do think about from time to time is who on earth we would have if we didn’t have him. Then I put it out of my mind because I can’t think of an alternative.”
One of the reasons that Wenger chose to dispense with experience and gamble on youth as the club moved closer to a new life at the new stadium can now be seen as the art of the possible. The practice of only awarding one year contracts to those who had passed their 30th birthday was as much to do with their high wages and dwindling sell-on value as the conviction that their performance would inevitably decline. Far better in every way to put most of your eggs in a young basket. Despite the constraints, as the Ashburton Grove plans fell into place Wenger was upbeat. “I tell you there are half a dozen who have a chance [to establish themselves in the first team]. Really promising players. It thrills me, for one simple reason. It’s that I feel that I came here and I’ve helped this club to . . . not only to win. I would like to [think that I have taken it] through an era where we have put the club at a different level. For the training ground, for the new stadium, for the youth set-up which has become international and of course if we can win everything with the top team it’s fantastic. But to think that nothing major can happen to this club now gives me an easier sleep. If the club gets into financial trouble, I can guarantee you it will not be relegated with the players we have.”
CHAPTER NINE
UP AND RUNNING
Whatever people were calling the new residence, the funding was in place and Arsenal’s new home slowly took shape over a two-and-half-year period. The nightmare of unpredictable costs that had blighted the construction of Wembley was avoided when the board negotiated a fixed-price contract which meant that Sir Robert McAlpine would bear the expense of any unforeseen problems, with hefty financial penalties to be incurred on late delivery. Of course the price was only fixed if Arsenal didn’t fall prey to the usual temptation of clients radically changing their minds during the construction process. That this didn’t occur is testimony to the clarity of forward thinking by the directors at the planning stage. In fact, the stadium was handed over two weeks early in July 2006, allowing the club to stage three preliminary events to gain the necessary local authority safety certificate ahead of the first competitive fixture.
“To design and deliver such a beautiful stadium on such a restricted site, with different ground levels, railway lines and countless other obstacles in the way – well, to be honest I can’t think of a more challenging stadium development in the modern era,” commented Simon Inglis, stadium expert and author of the seminal work Football Grounds of Britain. “Herbert Chapman and his contemporaries set a very high standard during the 1930s. Now Arsenal has done it again at the start of the new century. The Emirates really is a cut above any other club stadium in the Premiership, as was Highbury after 1936. When I watched my first match in the new stadium, my main impression was that I was now, for the first time – with respect to the City of Manchester Stadium – in Britain’s first truly 21st-century stadium. It felt to me as if I was at a World Cup, in another country.”
The reason for such critical acclaim is that first and foremost, all the criteria for a state-of-the-art stadium are in place. Wherever you sit the sight lines are excellent and the roomy, padded seats make other stadiums feel constricted and passé and thankfully do not spell out a sponsor’s name. Unfortunately, though, like most clubs in the Premier League, Arsenal have yielded to the temptation of installing an LED system, an animated electronic advertising medium replacing the traditional perimeter boards (which UEFA later forced the club to resurrect for the Champions League). An intrusive eyesore to fans at the ground and television viewers alike, how ironic then that it is directly in the line of vision of the best seats in the house.
The concourses are broad, well lit and amply stocked with refreshment areas, from the ubiquitous fast food facilities all the way to waitress service in the Diamond Club passing by the bars and restaurants at the Club Level on the way. “We expect,” says Simon Inglis, “experienced stadium architects like HOK Sport to get the basics right. But it is rare to find a client in the football world to go the extra mile on fixtures and fittings.” (Unlike other football stadiums, public areas and works of art – including two cannons and the spelling out of ‘ARSENAL’ in huge concrete letters – add another dimension.)
Just as Herbert Chapman left his imprint off the pitch, so will Wenger. Apart from the cups and championships the former a
cquired, he was the catalyst behind changing the name of the Gillespie Road Underground station to Arsenal and promoted the idea of stadiums with roofs and floodlight football. Wenger will leave behind a first-class training centre at London Colney, the Emirates pitch (having been heavily involved in the process that determined its dimensions and the quality of the playing surface) and other areas where he was directly involved at the design stage such as the dressing rooms and treatment areas that will be a boon for future generations. Notably, the horseshoe format of the home dressing room has been specifically designed to allow the manager to dominate the room, unlike the traditional rectangular changing areas with seats on all four sides, where it is possible for players to avoid his eye. On first seeing it, Alan Smith was surprised: “The dressing room is just so plain, with the slatted wooden benches and the lockers. There’s no sign there that it’s an Arsenal dressing room and I think Arsène asked for it to be that way.” Of course he did. Nothing to distract the focus of his players. Whatever Arsène wanted, Arsène got. And he was insistent that there would be no shortcuts to compromise optimum matchday preparations. So ample space was also given over for a massage and treatment area, a gym, a hydrotherapy pool, showers and baths, and a wide warm-up area leading to a tunnel some four times the width of Highbury’s tight squeeze. The overall impression is of functional comfort, in contrast to the antiquated conditions of the past. By comparison, whilst not ramshackle, the opposition dressing room gives the impression that it had nowhere near the same care and attention lavished on it.
Not that the stadium is perfect. Based on the model HOK employed for Benfica’s Estadio da Luz (Stadium of Light) constructed for the Euro 2004 Championships, in contrast to Highbury’s traditional British rectangular shape with four distinct stands and open corners, the contours form a closed oval. Due to the height restriction imposed by the local authority, the only way to reach the required capacity of 60,000 was to seat a large number of the fans much further away from the action than they had been used to. To make matters worse, the North Bank bond holders had been prioritised and could opt for places alongside the pitch ahead of those who had sat in the equivalent spot at Highbury. Thus, many long-term supporters from the East and West Upper tiers found themselves several rows further back than they would have wanted (on top of the greater distance from the action for everyone).
Quite simply, the intimacy of the old amphitheatre was now just a memory, the relationship between the performers and the audience changed for ever, an inevitable consequence of the move upmarket. Gone was the intimi datory feel of the home fans breathing down the necks of the opposing team. Any hostility towards opponents would have to be created by the noise provided by the extra number of home supporters. In an attempt to re-create the big night atmosphere at Anfield and Celtic Park, the club decided to find an ‘anthem’ to produce the same effect as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. They chose Elvis Presley’s ‘The Wonder of You’, a decision that had hardcore supporters squirming in embarrassment, although familiarity has started to encourage some scarf waving when it is played as the teams wait in the tunnel.
It is unlikely that Arsène Wenger had a great deal of input into this aspect of the stadium design, although he would probably have been in favour of creating more space between the touchline and the stands to allow for his substitutes to warm up properly and lessen the likelihood of injuries that might be caused by chasing a ball running out of play and crashing into advertising hoardings. But if Arsène prefers to watch from the poor viewpoint of the technical area because he can’t stand the separation from his players, how does he think the fans feel, with their heroes that much further out of reach?
The change in atmosphere aside, the crowning glory of the Emirates is that the sheer scale of the arena creates a striking impression. Perhaps this reflects its unusual setting. Suddenly, emerging out of the capital city’s concrete jungle, Simon Inglis’s matchless 21st-century stadium rises like a phoenix out of the ashes of an area whose heyday had long passed. Normally you would expect to find a similar structure alongside a major thoroughfare and approach it through soulless walkways. Continental in conception, the location is both traditionally and contemporaneously British in character. Surrounded by terraced houses, cheek by jowl with luxury apartments in the process of construction (some courtesy of Arsenal, the property company) and serviced by multicultural supermarkets and takeaways, the stadium exemplifies football’s place in the community in today’s urban London. Unfortunately, despite the 60,000 capacity it is still not possible to roll up on matchday and buy a ticket. Only season-ticket holders and members have the right of entry and there are thousands waiting to join them (although locals and owners of one of the newly built Highbury Square flats had the opportunity to jump up the priority list).
For the fortunate thousands able to get in from the start there were four categories of membership: platinum (for those who had bought season tickets in the expensive Club Level middle tier), gold (ordinary season-ticket holders), silver (members who were given the first opportunity to purchase individual match tickets on a game-by-game basis) and red (who could buy any remaining match tickets once the silver membership’s four-week preferential period had elapsed). There were 9,000 platinum members, 36,000 gold, 22,000 silver and 80,000 red (the red category – the final one on the registered fan food chain – is the only one open to new comers). In the event that a fixture fails to sell out, only then would non-members get their chance. However, there seemed little likelihood of this ever happening if the experience of the first season was anything to go by and one suspects that only a sustained lack of success will see non-members ever attending in any great numbers. With over 100,000 silver and red members paying £26 and £25 a season respectively just to have the opportunity to buy tickets, the system suited the club just fine.
Naturally the Emirates had teething problems, not least the difficulty of getting away after the final whistle. From the first games, as the clock wound down an expanse of red seats started to become part of the scenery as thousands headed for the exits early in the hope of beating the crush in the streets outside. Although the local council had expected Holloway Road and Drayton Park stations to be upgraded, Transport for London decided that the cost of £70 million was not justified for fewer than 30 matchdays a year, which put excessive pressure on the Arsenal, Finsbury Park and Highbury & Islington stations. Local authority parking restrictions had made it a chore to travel to matches by car, so the by-product for those who did not live within walking distance were inevitable post-match queues to get on the available trains, a situation exacerbated with the authorities themselves on a learning curve, refining their own crowd-control arrangements match by match. “The bottom line,” as Mark Woodward, who travels from Felixstowe by road and rail put it after the first few weeks, “is that different people have different journeys to make, and with no upgrade in the transport infrastructure, coupled with the 20,000 increase in attendance, people are still adjusting to the new realities and the number leaving early has increased.” A few months were needed for the club, police and local authorities to adjust to the new environment. By the time the Emirates opened for a second season, they had all mostly got to grips with the situation, although old habits died hard for many who had become accustomed to beating the full-time exodus.
Inside the stadium there were new experiences to come to terms with too. Gone were the cramped conditions of the old ground, so that there were not only more ways to spend money on food and drink but it could be consumed in a far more agreeable environment, not least on the upper tier concourses which afforded spectacular vistas of London on all sides. The view from the Upper East side also encompassed Highbury, which brought home the remarkable feat of moving just round the corner. Or at least it did, until the flats in Drayton Park were built and most of the old stadium demolished.
In spite of the increase in the number of outlets, with the amount of additional customers many would vacate their seats a
fter 30 minutes to beat the half-time rush, and those who did wait until the interval would find themselves at the back of the queue and unable to return until the second half was already underway. At times it felt less like being at a football match and more like an NFL or baseball game, where spectators seem permanently on the move in and out of their seats regardless of what is occurring on the field of play. Further, because of the larger seats, to let someone by everyone was forced to stand up, thereby blocking the view for up to four rows behind them. It was not surprising then that many long-term season-ticket holders bemoaned the change from Highbury, exasperated by the new breed of so-called fans who seemed to care more about their stomachs and journeys home than supporting the team they had paid so much to see.
Of course, compared to season-ticket holders and ordinary members, on a per capita basis there were more important revenue streams coming from different levels of VIPs. One of the main reasons that the directors were desperate to move was the lack of availability for premium seats at Highbury – either for affluent individuals or the corporate market. Where the new arena undoubtedly did not disappoint from the start was in bringing in much more revenue than Highbury ever did. The middle tier of the Emirates has over 9,000 premium seats – 7,000 going to Club Level members paying between £2,500 and £4,750 for their season tickets and 2,000 in 150 hospitality boxes, prices for which range from £65,000 to £150,000 a year (which was probably the cost of a couple of weeks’ salary to at least two of the boxholders, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp). These prices applied for the first two years of the stadium’s life so will inevitably increase from the start of the 2008/09 season.