An interesting article by Elliot but the idea of additional parking around our new stadium is a non-starter. One of the reasons Arsenal obtained planning permission was because they were able to convince the council that local transport would be the prime mover of fans to and from games. Quite apart from which anyone who has travelled by car to the likes of Villa Park, Old Trafford or the Riverside can explain how absolutely pointless it would be to hope for a faster getaway. How the failure of Transport for London’s infrastructure can be blamed at the Club’s door by Elliot is somewhat beyond me as clearly Arsenal have no control over either the tube system, buses or trains. The failure is totally that of the transport industry because they are quite happy to continue shafting their captive consumers with no intention of investing sufficiently in their industry to improve our lot. So far as I can tell any money already provided by Arsenal has been spent cosmetically enhancing Arsenal and Finsbury Park stations but that’s not the fault of the Club.

Opening Holloway station post match won’t help either. The principle problem relating to Holloway station is that the antiquated lift system cannot move sufficient numbers, but even with new lifts this wouldn't change things. The police would also have problems with regard to implementing a queuing system for Holloway and the controlled crossing of a major arterial road in order to access the station – especially so because they don’t have anything like the manpower to handle more than the three main stations they’re already controlling, namely Finsbury Park, Arsenal plus Highbury & Islington. Add that to the fact that Holloway Road and Arsenal tube stations are in close proximity on the same tube line and it’s easy to see why Arsenal tube was deemed to be the station of choice by the powers that be. Even if Holloway was upgraded you’d still have the same train capacity to service both stations, namely insufficient.

Arsenal Station has had loads of money spent on it but all they’ve really done is put down a new floor, re-tile the walls and put in a lot more CCTV cameras. All things that were overdue anyway and none of which make any real difference to the fans, other than the fact that all CCTV cameras within the area can now be controlled by the police from within the stadium on match days, which is an added safety feature with regard to crowd movement. At least I assume they can control the cameras at Arsenal now – that was the intention but I happen to know that there were systems integration problems initially. Finsbury Park had a fortune spent on it, granted the concourse looks better, but there are no perceptible improvements to the services provided by the Piccadilly, Victoria and overground trains serviced at this station to match the improved concourse.

Drayton Park Station is a joke. The rail companies don’t run trains into Moorgate late at night and don’t run them at all at weekends. There is plenty of room to expand the station and platform areas but the bottom line is they don’t seemingly consider it worthy of investment. It’s not about providing a good service from the nearest station to the stadium it’s about rail companies not bothering to alter and improve a mediocre service. Despite customer requests I've been advised by fans that they won’t even add additional coaches to existing trains never mind adding additional match-day trains. Those captive punters using the line have to hike to an overcrowded Finsbury Park station and use the existing overcrowded service rather than use the altogether more convenient Drayton Park.

Any improvements with regard to leaving the area after the match since the start of the season have been purely down to the paying punters altering their match day movement patterns. Police directional control plus Arsenal’s attempts to keep fans around for longer after the match have been the prime movers in this regard. The Transport companies have shoved their collective heads up their arse and done zilch. In my opinion the Club, Police and planned road closures have done far more to assist the fans than any of the transport people.