Having listened to many various opinions of the new stadium, I'm rather surprised by the positive feedback. When the project was first announced, I was all for the development on the basis that the club can only develop if there's room for financial growth. Whilst this is still obviously the case, it seems as though the club aren't aware of the fact that they've cross many lines in order to achieve this.

The problems began several days after last season. Merely days after the 'final salute' against Wigan, the membership renewal pack arrived on my doorstep. I'm usually more than happy to pay the lofty £30 fee for the red membership, but being issued ultimatums didn't really make for pleasant reading. The notion was effectively this - you have to renew your membership in the next fourteen days, or you won't be able to purchase tickets for the Dennis Bergkamp testimonial. Deciding that I wasn't going to be held to ransom, I declined, and attempted to use a relative's membership card to purchase tickets.

On the day testimonial tickets went on sale to red members, I didn't have internet access. For several hours, I tried to get through on the phone - each time, the voicemail recording stated 'please try again' later, and so a charge was incurred because of listening to this every time. When I finally got through several hours later, the operator (who sounded like he was about 14), informed me that the system was currently down, and to call back in half an hour. Upon doing so, the new answering message informed me that tickets were now sold out. Obviously disappointed, I e-mailed the Arsenal box office about this, and rather unsurprisingly, received nothing in response.

As the real season was approaching, I decided that now it was a reasonable renewal time for the red membership. The first home game, against Aston Villa, went on sale around ten days before the game. Knowing the tribulations of contacting by phone, this time I made sure that I was online. On the day of sale, I attempted for an hour to make a purchase - and was finally told that there was a problem with the service, and that it had been postponed until 2.30pm that day. I logged on again, only to discover that the sale had once again been postponed until the next day. Don't the club realised that most people generally aren't fully available during these weekday hours? Having taken the Friday off work, the tickets finally went online, posing even more problems.

The new system relies on a program which allows you to select your quadrant, block, row, and then seat number. Unfortunately, unless you're on broadband, loading this application takes an obscene amount of time - and the chances of getting more than one ticket are non-existent. Formerly, by using Ticketmaster, you could simply select 'best available' tickets, and that would be that. Arsenal obviously deemed that eliminating Ticketmaster would be a useful cost-cutting exercise, even if it meant undermining any fan without broadband access. I've since managed to acquire tickets using the website (thanks to slow ticket sales for subsequent games), but still consider it to be the worst ticket sales process I've ever had the displeasure to encounter.

The Champions League qualifier against Dinamo Zagreb was the first game I attended, and I was most looking forward to the new stadium. 'State of the Art'? You're having a laugh. Having been to many arenas/stadiums around the world, I was hoping for escalators to be installed for ease of access to the upper tiers. No chance. Instead, there's a lift which carries around twelve people, and takes longer than it would do to simply walk. In addition to this, there's fully concreted panels on the exterior which look incomplete - and there's no Arsenal badges in sight.

During a visit to Madison Square Garden last winter, I was impressed that no matter how busy it was, there were never any queues for the extensive catering options. You'd think that with Emirates Stadium being, 'state of the art', that the same would apply, but apparently not. Instead there was a lengthy queue, and then a burger meal which cost £7. They reckon that they spent lengthy periods of time considering their catering options, but clearly opted for the most profitable one for the club, rather than the most convenient/accessible one for the fans. It was at this stage that I realised that each and every fan was being treated like an absolute idiot. The stadium's atmosphere, which operates completely independently from Highbury, feels like a void. Yes, there's 22,000 more fans in the stadium. But the majority of them are armchair fans who simply weren't capable/bothered to find their way into THOF.

Meanwhile, Arsenal.com continued to rip-off football supporters with no shame whatsoever. Tickets for the Brazil vs. Argentina friendly went on sale to Arsenal members in the first instance. The website declared that 'in the unlikely event of any tickets remaining, they will go on general sale'. Unlikely? I wouldn't have thought so. They clearly understood the enthusiasm for tickets coming from non-Arsenal fans, and decided that they'd try and blackmail them to join their membership by telling an absolutely blatant lie. They knew full well the game wasn't going to sell out - and even when it went on general sale, tickets were still available up until the day of the match. During the match, their pockets were thickly lined thanks to adverts for Wayne Rooney's autobiography. Never mind that he's cheated Arsenal on several occasions, and generally isn't welcomed by Arsenal fans - there's money to be made. You may argue that it wasn't an Arsenal game, but considering that most fans in the stadium were Arsenal members, they were fully aware of what they were doing.

Barcelona recently unveiled their new shirt sponsor to be Unicef. And it's the club paying the company for the privilege, rather than vice versa. This is clear proof that morals can be included within the development of a football club - you just have to know where to draw the line. Unfortunately, the club have lost all sense of reality, and the days of level-headed thinking are well and truly beyond us.

And don't even get me started on the post-match transport.