It is a bitch of a job. I did myself a favour: fitted a K&N and left the filter housing off.
The K&N comes with a jubilee clip, so no chance of it coming off. With the engine cover on, everything looks normal. But you can hear turbo induction and I'm sure it breathes more easily, fortunately there's not much around that areas of the engine bay but clean open air, so no risk of taking in hot air like in hot-hatch-chavmobiles
I did that a year ago, my service this year was a quick visual and a quick flick-over with a clean paintbrush. No tools or effort required. Job done for another year!