I’m a big fan of away games. I believe that there is better atmosphere and it’s nice to see different grounds. Having attained my ticket a week in advance, I was really looking forward to this match. Despite our past two results at Fratton Park were draws, I had high hopes it would be third time lucky.

The only trouble was my friend who was going couldn’t give me a lift and although all the shops are open late in the run up to Christmas, the Arsenal travel club decided to be closed, so I couldn't book a coach place with them. In the end, I went with another coach company who will remain nameless.

After a relatively short and uneventful coach journey down, I was struck by the friendliness of the Pompey fans. The coach dropped us a couple of miles away from the ground, and I was unsure of how to get there. I asked a Pompey fan for directions, and he not only invited me into his Taxi up to the ground, but refused to let me pay anything. Top man!

Having been informed prior to the match of the poor refreshment facilities in the ground, (this is true) I went to the Tesco’s next to the ground to get some food and although I was walking around in my Arsenal shirt, encountered no trouble.

From my first look at the ground, I was pleasantly surprised. Walking down towards the turnstiles, there was a mural on the wall which was about 100m long, depicting various historic images in Pompey’s history. A nice touch. The turnstiles were the electronic ones which we have at Arsenal which was a bit of a disappointment, as I liked the old style ones.

Once in the ground, I was less impressed. Not only was there only one place to buy refreshments. The only way of getting to the refreshments booth was along a path which if two people wanted to walk together they would be squashed. I felt for the people who were sat at the other end of the stand, as they would spend the whole of half time getting to that refreshment kiosk, as everything was so tightly packed in. This was also true of the seats, which allowed no leg room. Moreover, the roof they had erected, had several pillars which left people with restricted view sears, sold at normal price – not impressive. Having said that, Pompey are planning a new stadium, so obviously they acknowledge this isn’t good enough.

The other stands looked better, although the stand to the right of the away end had 3 sets of pillars in a line, which meant that if you were sat at the back, you would have to crane your neck round all of these. I’m thankful this isn’t the case at the Grove.

The game was pretty forgettable. This was Arsenal’s first 0-0 draw since…….the corresponding match last season. This one was even more boring. The only chance of the first half was a shot which went over the bar. The second half was better, but unfortunately, Arsenal seemed to just have an off day. Although the chants of “Play up Pompey” are impressive, the Arsenal fans had fun, with “you’ve only got one song”. The atmosphere throughout was reasonably good, although I found the Portsmouth bell-ringer incredibly annoying. The stewarding seemed very reasonable, with their only intervention to tell someone to stop smoking.

Getting out the ground is difficult, as you still have to walk along this annoying narrow path, but once out, the car journey back to North-West London took 80 minutes, which meant I was home at 11pm. This was very quick.

Overall, I enjoyed the day out and quite liked the ground. Having said that, Portsmouth need a better ground to compete in the Premiership and they have made the right decision in that respect, in that they are replacing the old ground.