Among other things, Mr Friar said that

• Contrary to rumour, the planning application submitted last week was not late.
• The complicated nature of the proposals, involving 3 large sites all of which are to have usage changes, means that the application is much larger (80 boxes of papers) and the plan more expensive, than you'd usually expect for a stadium project like this. Mr Friar's confident that it would be the best, and most expensive, stadium in Europe.
• The Arsenal groundsman Steve Braddock has had plenty of input into the design of the ground, bearing in mind that while we might want a capacity more like Man United's, we'd like a pitch more like Highbury's. One reason against developing Highbury further was that filling in the corners would affect air circulation and the "bowling green" would suffer. The new stadium has gaps in the sides with the same thing in mind.
• The capacity of the stadium is limited by the fact that it's enclosed by rail-lines, which can't be moved, plus the fact that the plans already go to the legal height limit. Unless the laws change, we shouldn't expect any increases in capacity in the future. The club are clearly going out of their way to stay in the same area. They could have built a bigger and cheaper stadium elsewhere.
• Speaking of capacity, the council will be empowered to restrict the capacity should Arsenal fail to meet certain targets, such as "no more than 20% of supporters driving to games".
• No-one should think of the Ashburton Grove plan as a done deal. There's a long way to go yet.
• It is impossible (and would be foolish) to rule out the possibility of a sponsored name for the new stadium. The cost is just too much to absolutely discount any way of bringing in extra cash. (see also this page on naming the new ground)
• Arsenal currently have as many consultants as supporters. I think this was a joke, but it was very quiet at Highbury today.

ArseWeb is very happy to be supporting AISA's efforts, since it does appear that so far it is (what appears to be) a small minority of naysayers making the most noise.

However we do intend these pages to serve all Arsenal fans. So if any ArseWeb readers who are opposed to the Ashburton Grove development want their views expressed on ArseWeb we'd be delighted to hear from you.