Arsene Wenger says that the period immediately after Arsenal moved into the Emirates Stadium was "the most difficult" time in his life, reports the London Evening Standard.

Arsenal moved into their 60,000-capacity North London home in 2006 after 93 years at Highbury having spent over £400million to finance the project.

"In 2006 the most difficult period of my life started," Wenger, speaking in an interview with BT Sport ahead of the Emirates FA Cup, said. "We had restricted finances, we had to pay back a huge amount of money and we had to sell our best players.

"We had to stay in the top, to stay in the Champions League and at least to make 54,000 people [attend]. There are many debates when you start building a stadium, how big can it be? It's quite simple.

"At the time it was £4,000 a seat. You multiply that by 60,000 it's £240million. Plus we had to buy the soil, all the businesses we had to buy out. It went to over £420m.

"We had to pay a huge amount of money back every year. That's why we had to stay in the Champions League."