After the great wins against Man Utd, Juve, and Villa, Le Boss signing his contract, and the positive stadium decision last night, things were definitely going a bit too well.

So it's no great surprise that Arsenal's bubble burst tonight and, if anything, we should be glad that the existence of tis competition gives us the chance to be brought down to earth a bit, without it really mattering a great deal. This represented Rovers' best chance of european football next year. Arsenal will be extremely disappointed to start next season in the UEFA cup.

Having come back from 2-0 down at half-time on Sunday, this relatively inexperienced Arsenal team tried to go one better.

Arsenal started both halves well in fact, and 6 minutes into the game Friedel came out well to stop Wiltord getting noto a through ball. Inamoto had already had a couple of good chances.

While the Japanese player looked alright going forward at times, and didn't mind getting stuck in, he was guilty of dwelling on the ball a couple of times and it cost us goals.

The first one just after 10 minutes came when the extremely impressive Tugay robbed him 10 yards inside our half and fed Matt Jansen outside the left corner of our penalty area. He cut inside Matthew Upson and curled the ball inside the far post from the edge of the box.

4 minutes Taylor came out and flapped at a Gillespie cross with his fingertips. He did well to block the ensuing shot at close range, but the ball came out to Tugay and his mishit shot found Jansen in space 10 yards in front of Taylor's left hand post for an easy tap into an open goal.

A minute later Inamoto lost the ball again but Jansen skied a good chance for a quick hattrick.

5 minutes after that it was all over when a Dunn shot through a crowd, from just inside the D, was blocked well but ricocheted through to Mark Hughes on the right, and his finish was as easy as Jansen's second had been.

Jansen got his hattrick halfway through the second half with a good breakaway goal started by another excellent through ball from Tugay. He found Duff who passed unselfishly to Jansen for another virtually open goal.

We had a few half chances. Kanu was unlucky one time when trying to turn on the ball inside the box - it came up and hit his upper arm and the ref gave the free-kick against him. Another time Grimandi hit a superb cross in from the right which Kanu didn't have to jump very high for, but the Nigerian didn't really take off properly and headed it over.

Arsenal started:
Taylor; Tavlaridis, Keown, Upson, Gio;
Pennant, Inamoto, Grimandi, Edu;
Wiltord, Kanu.

Stepanovs and Aliadiere came on from the bench, where they had been joined by one Craig Holloway. The 17 year old 5th choice keeper got his reserve team debut last night when Graham Stack was injured, and Stack didn't recover in time to be Taylor's sub last night. Blimey, while I'm sure Holloway is agood keeper, let's hope Wright is back and able to be Taylor's number 2 before long. Or will he get straight back in...?