Bukayo Saka [Pedro Porru/SPP]

WHEN the first match at the Emirates Stadium took place Tony Blair was still in Number 10, the iPhone hadn’t been yet to be released and Reading, Bolton and Wigan were in the Premier League.

That’s Wigan who almost lost to Hemel Hempstead in the FA Cup at the weekend and are now down in League One.

As much as we all loved the irreplaceable Highbury, a lot of time has passed, a mix of the highs and lows ­– the Eboue years, Wilshere outskilling Barcelona on the Ashburton Grove turf, Thierry Henry coming back and scoring against Leeds, Arsene saying goodbye, right through to bad Tifos and the echo of North London Forever.

It all makes the statistic doing the rounds this week about home league defeats even more astounding: that Spurs in their self-declared “best stadium in he world” have already almost notched as many than Arsenal have in all these years in north London’s true home of football.

Spurs have lost 41 times in the league at their stadium, a spacebowl nobody seems to want to sponsor, quickly closing in on the 48 home defeats tally for Arsenal at the Emirates. Tottenham’s stadium was built 13 years later.

They may, in their own minds, be the “champions of Europe”, but that’s a hard sell for a season ticket.

• THE John Lewis Christmas ad is out, featuring a man of my age being reminded that he had to stop going clubbing after having a baby – it might sell some extra pillows for the company, but will do nothing to help north London’s falling birth rate.

It is the time of year for schmaltzy commercials to make us feel Christmassy – even if the most Christmassy thing about Christmas is to excuse yourself from the mayhem to watch Boxing Day football, an escape hatch which has been cruelly taken away from us with no game planned for December 26.

Arsenal, you may have seen, have made their own John Lewis style advert for its merch. A boy whose idol is Bukayo Saka accidentally gets locked in the club shop and stadium, before being woken up by his hero in the morning.

Money has pointedly been spent on securing the rights for Amy Winehouse’s Our Day Will Come as the soundtrack. Bold message. Let it be 2026.