Emirates Stadium. Since it opened its doors for the 2006-07 season, Arsenal's newfangled home has been branded charmless, prosaic and generally yawn-worthy.

Sometimes—correction; often—the atmosphere inside the bowl plonked onto Ashburton Grove has felt sterile and downright soulless.

That certainly wasn't the case last night as the fans and stadium, like many of the players sporting red on the pitch, came of age.

Since Arsenal's 3-1 victory over Chelsea in December, agitated moans and nervous groans have been snuffed out in favour of encouragement and good old-fashioned singing.

Most importantly, it's been loud.

The voices of the Arsenal fans rippled round the Emirates, and helped spur the team to a famous victory against a spellbinding Barcelona, for the full 90 minutes.

There were no empty rows to speak of, when impatient suburbians usually leave early to beat the queues, for the sake of getting home 20 minutes early. Even the suit brigade spurned their early prawn sandwiches, glued to Arsenal's epic fightback.

Doubtless it has been the recent good form of Arsene Wenger's side that has brought the fans to life but they have reciprocated in full measure.

Andrey Arshavin's perfectly executed winner was the most euphoric Arsenal moment since Sol Campbell scored against the same opponents in the 2006 Champions League final. I swear the stadium was shaking.

But even before that, despite Messi at times sashaying past Arsenal players at will, and going behind in the first half, Gunners fans kept their frustrations at bay.

Emirates has been hard to get used to. The name and new badge have not helped as romantic followers mourned the loss of the character and intimacy of Highbury. And incorporating thousands of new fans, who previously couldn't get tickets, getting them to sing the right words (Arsenal are the "best team" the world has ever seen, according to one fan I heard last night), getting them to sing at all in fact, hasn't been easy.

The club's inevitably trite attempts to make a stadium a home have been quite good though, despite the cringe-worthy Americanism of "Arsenalisation" being applied to it. The Stadium now looks as if it is being 'hugged' and watched over by an assemble of its most legendary players, and the inside is awash with memorable pictures and complementary words of inspired commentators, such as Peter Jones's "I swear I do not believe it" from 1979 and Brian Moore's "It's up for grabs now" from '89.

Elvis's underwhelming and impertinent "The Wonder Of You," supposedly a rallying cry, introduced as Arsenal's answer to "You'll never Walk Alone," limps on but has at least been relegated in the pecking order in the run up to kick-off behind a stirring video montage on the big screens, a wonderful smattering of Arsenal's greatest ever moments followed by some reminders of the present players' capabilities, such as Cesc Fabregas's 30-yard screamer at the San Siro. All set to dramatic music that segued seamlessly into the Champions League theme before kick off. It certainly brought out a sustained bout of goosebumps.

There were even retina-burning light beams strafing about the stadium from all sides, adding to the club's efforts to make the game feel like the biggest heavyweight championship clash since Ali vs Frazer.

Then there were the flags left on every seat, waved in unison to greet the players. They did the rest.

Obviously it was a special occasion, but hopefully Arsenal's fans can recreate something close to that on a more regular basis, and the stadium can continue to build its own character.