The shirts were red. The fans were all white.

But while all this seems to be the first attempt to enter a new and unwelcome world, it is not new, not exactly. Twenty-eight years ago, Arsenal faced exactly the same problem, albeit from a substantially different perspective. The answer found by the club may provide some inspiration, almost three decades later, but it also offers a warning.

The day before the first game of the 1992 season of English football – and the first ever round in the newly minted Premier League – Arsenal players gathered on the field of Highbury, the historic club house, for a final session of work out. It was not as familiar as it could have been.

One end of the stadium, the North Bank, traditionally home to 15,000 of Arsenal’s most ardent fans, was hidden behind a vast mural, covering almost the entire width of the field. The club had demolished the old grandstand over the summer and a new four-seater structure was taking shape. For now, though, the North Bank was a mess of cranes, scaffolding and concrete.

The mural was the idea of ​​the then Arsenal executive vice president, David Dein. Dein had a reputation as a visionary – by his will, Highbury was the first English stadium to install giant video screens – and wanted to find a way to “camouflage” the construction site. He commissioned a design studio, January, which entrusted the work to one of his resident artists, Mike Ibbison.

Ibbison drew a pencil sketch, about a meter long, depicting the appearance of the new stand: a block of about 1,500 fans wearing Arsenal shirts and holding scarves high. The false perspective gave him depth from any angle of view.