Arsenal moved a significant step closer to guaranteed Champions Legaue football next season with this "strongly contested" scrap with Leeds.

Ljungberg, who'd missed a free header from 5 yards a little earlier got the first after 15 minutes. He started the move a few yards centrally outside the box, passing forwards to Henry and continuing his run into the box. Henry slipped the return ball through a bunch of defenders into the space in front of Nigel Martyn and Freddie showed his pace to get there ahead of Ferdinand, round the keeper, and slide the ball (tantalising slowly) over the line.

Dixon played a 1-2 with Henry later in the half. This time the return ball was cut back from deep on the left, and Lee met it with an excellent horizontal bicycle kick which Martyn did well to save. He'd earlier made a decent save from a long-range Henry shot too.

10 minutes into the second half Wiltord made it two. Vieira gave him the ball with back to goal just inside the right hand corner of the box and Sylvain turned and shot in one movement. He didn;t catch it that well but placed it perfectly, and the ball rolled past Martyn inside the far post.

Just 2 minutes later Leeds pulled one back with a superb dipping swerving Harte free-kick which Seaman hardly moved for. Not much chance of getting to it, mind.

Leeds had the best of it from then on, but stalwart defending from Adams and Keown an particular kept our nose in front. That and the post, when another Harte free-kick, from wide on the wing, bounced through a crowded box and came out off the far post.

It was a bad-tempered match and a shock to see 22 players on the field at the end. Viduka and Keown had a particularly eventful battle.

We're now 4 points ahead of LIverpool in third, with 2 games to play. A win against either Southampton or Newcastle will see us in the Champs League next year. We're already guaranteed to at least be in the qualifying stages.

Worth noting that, going into today's match, Leeds were the form side in the Premiership with 6 wins in a row. The out-of-form side, Leicester with 6 losses in a row, also had their fortunes reversed as Tottenham went down 4-2 at Filbert Street.

Bergkamp didn't get on the pitch. Mainly because of the closeness of the match I guess, but also presumably because of the nature of the tackles that were flying around. It'll now be interesting, with next week's cup final in mind, to see if he gets a run out in the reserves on Tuesday.

See match reports page for list of links to reports on other sites.