Arsenal v Villarreal, Highbury, 7.45: The vision of a Champions League final should be the antidote to any overdose of nostalgia tonight. The first leg of Arsenal's semi-final with Villarreal will be the last European match at Highbury before the move to Ashburton Grove stadium in the summer.

No one will dwell on the past when this evening may bring the club its greatest occasion of all in the tournament.

It is not sentimental to prize a ground where so much success has been achieved, but Arsene Wenger also happens to be in thrall to the old place. "Part of my soul is in the stadium," the manager said lyrically.

He thinks that a high, Premiership tempo can break Villarreal, and he understands, too, that the attempt will be made in an arena that embodies English football's heritage of intimacy.

"It's a bit strange," he said. "When you arrive for the first time at Highbury the stadium is suddenly in front of you and you don't know (how), because on the Continent you see a stadium from three miles away. What I always like in England is that you feel the club belongs to the population who live around there. I like the idea that you can go out the door and go to a football game. That doesn't exist anywhere else."

The architecture has turned into the backdrop of his life. "For me," Wenger explained fondly, "Highbury is the roof and the (pillars) coming down that make it a stadium from another age. And there is the contrast with the pitch. There is nowhere better in the world; the pitch is something special."

That surface has indeed assisted Arsenal, at their best, to produce football futuristic in its speed and sophistication. Captain Thierry Henry even utters a mock-complaint about a sward so true that a forward who has just missed a chance cannot blame the surface. "It's strange," he says of the site of his prolific scoring, "because the pitch is so small compared to others and usually I need some more space to run in, but I found myself happy there."

After tonight's game, Arsenal face a home Premiership fixture with Spurs on Saturday in which the contest for fourth place will continue to be contested before Wenger's side enters the second leg next Tuesday.

There has not been such a spell since April 2004. On that occasion, Arsenal lost an FA Cup semi-final to Manchester United on Saturday, got knocked out of the Champions League by Chelsea on Tuesday and engineered a comeback to overcome Liverpool in the Premiership on Friday. That mixed bag of results gave rise to mixed feelings that Wenger does not wish to see repeated. "It is a good opportunity to show that we have improved," he said of the comparable challenge ahead.

Genuine progress would be remarkable, as Wenger considers that 2003-04 season to be the peak of his career, since the side completed the Premiership programme undefeated. "You feel that there is not much room left any more for improvement," he said. "It's the closest you can get to taking the maximum from the team, because there was not one game where you really missed (out)."

Asked if it would be even more satisfying to win the Champions League, Wenger had a droll reply: "I would love to give you the answer."

He may get the chance to find out. Though Ashley Cole, who plays for the reserves today, and Sol Campbell are still missing, Cesc Fabregas is fit. The Spanish side are likely to be without the injured centre-backs Gonzalo Rodriguez and Juanma Pena in both legs.

As he did before successes against Real Madrid and Juventus, Wenger shows limited interest in the opposition and is more concerned that his players should be inspired by the first Champions League semi-final in Arsenal's history.

"We just have to be faithful to the game we want to play and not worry too much about nullifying the opposition," he said, refusing to be fixated with Villarreal's playmaker, Juan Roman Riquelme. "We have waited for so long to be where we are so let's just love it, enjoy it and give everything we can to win it."

Wenger was too slow to snap up the particular flat that will be built on the site of the Highbury dug-out, and Henry regrets that, with the stadium redeveloped, he will not be able one day "to go back and sit there and just remember".

If Arsenal play as they can, though, this may be a night that will burn forever in the memories of manager and captain.