If you want to hear 55,000 people “having a chat”, Emirates Stadium during Arsenal’s many routine home wins is the place.   I’m sure I heard Andrey Arshavin calling for the ball during his brief cameo against a tiring Celtic in this week’s Champions League play-off (“that’s cruel” shouted one Arsenal fan – doubling the decibel count - when Arshavin was brought on).   Arsenal’s win was the easiest £26m they’ll ever earn - the media estimate a Champions League run’s value - marginally more taxing than their Premier League dismissal of Portsmouth last Saturday.

That itself answered a question. Where would Celtic finish in the Premier League? Marginally above Portsmouth, more “Football” than “Europa” League. Whatever the competitive ‘faults’ of Scottish domestic football, would Celtic give up Europe for a Premier League spot?

Arshavin seemed to know when Celtic were about to lose the ball long before they did. Alexandre Song could stop any Celtic midfield momentum any time he liked.

 

And while Niklas Bentdner was the sore thumb in an otherwise free-flowing Arsenal side, he was still a cut above the considerable but ineffectual efforts of Scott MacDonald and co.     Even though Arsenal’s opener looked like a penalty from our distant corner of Islington, we quickly realised it wasn’t. Not only because Celtic keeper Artur Boruc was still shouting the Polish equivalent of “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” in the referee’s left ear at half-time. But also because the big screen highlights overlooked his ‘foul’ entirely.

How “not a penalty” it was became clearer with every TV replay (and did Robbie Earle really say “all of the above” when asked if Eduardo was “clever…and a CHEAT?”).

But although Celtic were three-down thanks to a fluky deflection, own goal and non-penalty, there’s little doubt that Arsenal could have found other ways of going three-nil up, if required.

All this happened 24 hours after football “returned to the dark ages” – the populist media’s take on balding pot-bellied men with knobbly knees waving their hands in the air like they didn’t care, in the middle of an enclosed East London field.

Upton Park was no “war zone” – check Helmand province for details. And these “new” hooligans weren’t “like” those of 25 years ago, they were them.

 

The Indie’s pompous James Lawton called the trouble a sign of “an unravelling nation.” It wasn’t. It was Millwall/West Ham. And the next time they meet, police could avert most trouble by confiscating all sanatogen at the turnstiles and banning zimmer frames.     None of this is to belittle the horror of a man being stabbed during the trouble (or to ignore the racist abuse directed at Carlton Cole). Equating that tragedy with the pantomime inside the ground did that.

When one woman looked in horror at the crowds outside Highbury tube on Wednesday, her friend reassured her that it was “Arsenal at home.” “Well, yes,” came the reply. “But who are all these green people?”

Everyone in earshot laughed. A FAR more typical matchday experience, whatever you may read.