Arsenal, beware! The uncomfortable truth behind Gunners' hopes of moving to Wembley during Emirates Stadium expansion

The younger generation of football fans likely won't even remember Highbury. Several of Arsenal's current first-team stars, including Max Dowman, Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri, were born well after the club left their spiritual home behind. Much of the old ground has been turned into flats, with some keeping and incorporating features of the stands that once stood there, if in part because of their statuses as grade-listed buildings.

Arsenal first explored leaving Highbury somewhere between Arsene Wenger's appointment as manager in 1996 and his first Premier League title in 1998. Requirements for English stadiums to become all-seater significantly reduced the capacity of the stadium, which became detrimental in an age where matchday revenue was becoming a major differential when it came to clubs' finances, best represented by Manchester United's success of that time and their redevelopment of Old Trafford.

Ironically, Arsenal considered buying Wembley Stadium, which itself was set to be demolished and rebuilt. As was pointed out in September when they faced the only other Football League club not named after a location in Port Vale, Arsenal didn't have to remain within the London borough of Islington in order to keep their name, which would have made such a move viable, even if it would have been unpopular to the local community. The Gunners even played Champions League matches at the national stadium between 1998 and 2000 in order to maximise that precious matchday revenue. However, the FA were reluctant to sign off a deal and the club eventually withdrew their interest in making it their permanent home.

Finding land sizeable enough to build a 60,000-seater stadium in London is scarce, but Arsenal were fortunate enough to find a suitable plot less than 500 yards from Highbury. In December 2001, after overcoming several hurdles and naysayers, the club first received official approval from Islington Council, subject to helping relocate local businesses, a waste recycling plant already on the site and upgrade of nearby Underground stations. "This is the most complicated stadium development in the world," Danny Fiszman, the late Arsenal director, claimed at the time. Wenger said it was the "biggest decision in Arsenal's history."

It wasn't until August 2006 that Arsenal were able to move into their palace of a new stadium, which sold its naming rights to airline Emirates in 2004 for an initial £100m, covering roughly a quarter of the project's cost.

Owing to Premier League broadcast money going through the roof and reaching unprecedented levels during the late 2000s and early 2010s, Arsenal didn't even feel the financial benefit of the move until about 2014 when they paid off the debts accrued to build the Emirates Stadium in the first place. Deloitte figures for 2023-24 confirmed their status as the division's second-highest earners for matchday revenue, behind only United, but there is a looming threat of others overtaking them in the near future, including Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester City, hence the need to expand.

The problems Arsenal once had both trying to expand Highbury and move into the site on Ashburton Grove are largely similar for the Emirates Stadium. As pointed out during the Telegraph's initial reporting this week, there is very little room to build out on the existing plot, given there are railway lines on two sides. On another, there is the busy Hornsey Road, which itself backs onto the even busier A1. From a safety perspective, there is only one vehicle ramp into the grounds for emergency services to use, and this would have to remain post-expansion.

The report adds that Arsenal's likeliest path to rebuilding will be from within the space they already occupy. In order to add more seats, they would change the angles of the current configuration to become steeper, reduce the already generous legroom in existing rows and adjust the slope of the roof. It has previously been suggested that the two corners which do not house a big screen could be filled with seats too.

Regardless, this is not going to be a simple or ordinary redevelopment. It's impossible for the Emirates Stadium to undergo a worthwhile expansion without bringing some sort of disruption with it. Thus comes the need to move out and play matches elsewhere.

As mentioned, Arsenal have played home matches at Wembley before, though in a different era and without much success. Wenger's teams of the 1998-1999 and 1999-2000 seasons fulfilled their home Champions League group stage fixtures in the London borough of Brent inside the old stadium with attendances slightly north of 70,000, though won only two of their six games there and were eliminated before the second stage on both occasions.

Much more recently, rivals Spurs spent three seasons staging home games at the new national stadium to a varying degree of success. Like Arsenal, they took Wembley for a test run during their 2016-17 Champions League campaign, but were knocked out at the group stage and then dumped out in the last 32 of the Europa League in humiliating fashion. There was also an agreement in place for Tottenham to spend the entire 2017-18 season there while they built their new £1bn ($1.3bn) ground on the site of the incumbent White Hart Lane, and though this proved to be a fine season by their standards, it arguably came at the worst possible time. The Spurs side of 2016-17 finished second in the Premier League and tallied a club-record 86 points, boasting a young team of stars such as Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Son Heung-min and Christian Eriksen, with Mauricio Pochettino in the dugout. They won 17 and drew two of their 19 league matches at home during White Hart Lane's farewell season, dropping only four points from a possible 57, before throwing away five from their first two matches at Wembley the following campaign.

Centre-back Toby Alderweireld admitted at the time that he and his team-mates had to get used to their new surroundings, and he span a story of how he would use features of White Hart Lane's architecture to calibrate his positioning and long-range passing. That was one teething problem to address, but another was the completely different atmosphere. Where the 36,000-capacity White Hart Lane kept noise inside and bounced around, neatly complementing Pochettino's intense pressing style, Wembley's vast open spaces meant you would often hear various chants at the same time which brought no bite, while lower profile matches saw little sound at all. The sense of community disappears in a bowl like that. This particularly became of detriment to Spurs when they were unexpectedly forced to spend the majority of 2018-19 at Wembley owing to delays finalising the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Spurs won only one of their first six matches at Wembley and were relieved to finally head back home in April 2019, returning to the same location where their old stadium once stood, which was another understated part of the move. Though Tottenham isn't too far from the national stadium - about a 30-minute drive round the North Circular Road on a good day - the area surrounding it is soulless, gentrified and not fit for club football. The outlets and novelty of it are fine for cup finals, England games, concerts or other sports, but when you're having to schlep there every other week, there's only the 90 minutes of the actual game to look forward to, which isn't always what football is about. A common 'what if' among Spurs fans nowadays revolves around the potential of having stayed at White Hart Lane for the remainder of the Pochettino era rather than going through a seismic period of transition.

The warning to Arsenal is twofold. Any move to Wembley, at this point for an unspecified amount of time but surely for at least one planned season, could lead to a period of tactical adjustment, and the longer they stay there increases the risk of apathy among supporters, which in turn would remove the atmospheric threat of home-field advantage.

Tottenham averaged crowds of 67,953 in their one full Premier League season at Wembley, breaking the attendance record at 83,222 during a 1-0 win against Arsenal. They also welcomed 83,782 and 84,010 spectators in Champions League clashes with Real Madrid and Juventus respectively. But when Spurs had to continue there for 2018-19, attendances dropped to a mean of 52,584, with Pochettino bemoaning the occasions where the entire upper tier of the bowl was closed off.

Therein lies another issue Arsenal would face. Tottenham had to receive special permission from Brent council to play their 2017-18 matches with the freedom to sell tickets for all 90,000 seats, with many locals opposed to such a move. Under current rules, Wembley can only host a certain number of full-capacity events per calendar year, which meant Spurs did not bother seeking that same approval for 2018-19. They had to accept their status as tenants rather than leaseholders, but this still led to various problems, including having to host a Carabao Cup win versus Watford at Stadium:MK in Milton Keynes - over 50 miles away - due to a clash of events, a Premier League loss to Manchester City being overshadowed by the ripped-up and spray-painted turf the match was played on after hosting the NFL one day prior, and then having to play three games in six days due to the inability to reschedule this tie.

There is no doubt that Arsenal would be able to come close to selling out Wembley should they move in as renters, just as Spurs did to the tune of £15m, and this would give supporters currently unable to frequent the Emirates Stadium due to the club's competitive ballot scheme the opportunity to see their heroes in the flesh. Conversely, the additional number of tourists and away fans capable of purchasing tickets in the home end would dilute an atmosphere which is already fiercely criticised at their current stadium. Arsenal and their supporters would be second-class citizens at the mercy of Wembley's operators.

What's been striking about the year-long reporting of Arsenal's tentative plans of expansion and briefly vacating the premises is the lack of consideration for the women's team, who made the Emirates Stadium their primary home stadium last season. Renee Slegers' side are by far the best-followed team in the WSL, even despite Chelsea's domestic dominance, and perhaps even on a global scale with average gates of 28,808 spectators for 2024-25 and 31,427 so far this term.

Arsenal are pioneers and industry leaders in this space, yet the focus has been on the men's team and how they will cope. The obvious solution for the women's side would be to make Boreham Wood's Meadow Park their main home stadium again, but with a capacity of 4,500 (only 1,700 of which is seated) and based outside London in a hard-to-reach district by public transport, it's no longer fit for purpose. This was demonstrated on Tuesday night when the reigning queens of Europe began their Champions League title defence at home to OL Lyonnes, much to the discontent of fans, players and media alike.

If the men's team head to Wembley, would Arsenal also secure permission for the women's team to also play there on alternating weeks? Would Brent council approve that?

Let's set the record straight. The only people who think Arsenal are not the biggest club in London are those who don't actually live in the city and country. Chelsea may have the two Champions Leagues and the Club World Cup that the rest of us have to pretend to care about, but the English capital belongs to the Gunners. They matter most. You can barely go a day in the Big Smoke without seeing someone brashly wearing some sort of Arsenal clobber. Tottenham managed to gather a mightily impressive 250,000 fans for their Europa League trophy parade in May, but if Mikel Arteta's side were to win the Premier League or Champions League this season, they could quite feasibly welcome double that figure. Over 100,000 are on Arsenal's season ticket waiting list alone.

Moving to the Emirates Stadium was meant to provide a reflection of Arsenal's status as the city's most important football club. Now, it's smaller than two other grounds within eight miles and will drop to sixth in the Premier League's capacity rankings once Man City's Etihad Stadium expansion is complete later this season.

There's clearly an ambition from all those within Arsenal to make the most of their prestige, support and cultural significance. Even if Arteta's current iteration of the men's first team doesn't deliver a major title, he has still managed to reignite the flame of a fanbase that was drifting into passivity before he returned as manager. The risk is that fire being extinguished if the team falters having to play away from their current home.

Ultimately, upgrading the Emirates Stadium represents more than adding a few thousand more seats. This is also about financial super strength and returning to the top of the stadia food chain for a club steeped in history.

The Telegraph's initial reporting claims figures at Arsenal have already looked into how Real Madrid spent five years and £887m ($1.2bn) on renovating their iconic Santiago Bernabeu ground, even if the jump in capacity afterwards was minimal, going from 81,044 seats to 83,186. As demonstrated by the £1bn stadium in the navy blue and white half of north London, there's scope for more grounds in the capital to host major events outside of their usual football matches.

There also needs to be some sort of future-proofing taken into account. Arsenal looked at sites towards the edge of London's orbital M25 motorway prior to acquiring the land at Ashburton Grove, and though that would have moved them far away from their longstanding home, they'd likely have had more room for manoeuvre in terms of future expansion. If and when the Emirates undergoes a transformation, consideration ought to be given to further works in the future as demand could foreseeably exceed the 70,000-seat number floating around within the next decade.

The only certainty ahead is that one way or another, Arsenal are going to have to suffer a little bit before the men and women's teams are able to play at an improved Emirates Stadium, but it's the supporters who are going to be most impacted.