Arsenal:
                Lehmann
        Lauren Toure Cygan Clichy
Pires (Cesc 80) Vieira Edu (Flamini 62) Reyes
       Henry Bergkamp (van Persie 72)

Once again Arsenal failed to play champagne football for a whole match, but this time it was the start that wasn't so good. Once they got into gear they were irresistable.

It could have been so different at the start, though. In the first minute Lehmann was forced to make a good save, stretching and diving to his left to palm away a shot from Dougie Freedman. It came wide to Andy Johnson and Lehmann did well to get himself in position to block him too.

A minute later Reyes won a corner which he took short to Henry who dribbled to the edge of the D before shooting. It was blocked and Kolo was just too far away to get there before a defender. Palace cleared but it went long enough for Clichy, who'd stayed back for the corner, to pick the ball up comfortably. He passed back to Lehmann who then showed us the other side of his game. Maybe the ball bobbled, but it looked to me like he'd tried to put his foot on the ball rather than getting behind it, and the ball slipped below his boot and headed for goal. Fortunately he'd just got enough of a touch to slow it down. Lehmann got back and since he couldn't pick it up he tried the old foot-on-the-ball trick again and thankfully this time he got it right, right on the line.

Bergkamp fed Henry on the edge of the box but Henry's backheel for Reyes wasn't strong enough. Up the other end a Routledge cross just eluded Freedman in the box, partly thanks to just enough pressure from Toure to put the striker off without tempting the ref to blow up. Then Toure did some more good work on the right wing. Initially Johnson beat him near the half way line but Toure's pace enabled him to shepherd the striker all the way past the goal-line.

On 10 minutes Edu gave the ball away in our half on the left. Another Routledge cross this time found Johnson's head and it lopped towards the far post forcing Lehmann into a decent save.

Reyes won a free kick 20 yards out when he was brought down bursting through 2 defenders. Henry took it quick but Kiraly was alive to it in the Palace goal which made it a trivial save.

On 20 minutues there was nice interplay between Bergkamp and Henry. Henry got the ball in the D and laid it back 15 yards to Dennis, who passed straight back to Henry. He performed a nice turn and shot, with plenty of defenders around him, and it just clipped the outside of the left post on its way out.

Vieira burst through on goal but play was called back for a foul by him on Michael Hughes (who I remember as a winger but seems now to be Palace's skipper and holding midfielder). Hughes was lucky because it was really just a question of Paddy having been stronger.

Just after the half hour we made the breakthrough. Edu spotted Reyes in space on the left and played a nice diagonal ball forward for him. Reyes whipped a cross to the near post where Bergkamp popped up to strike inside the post from the 6 yard line.

Moments later they could have been level. Yet another cross came from their right, and Johnson headed it on to Freedman in loads of space on the far side of the box. But despite the lack of pressure he had a go first-time and sliced it high and wide.

A couple of minutes later it was 2-0 thanks to a perfect strike from Reyes that came out of nowhere. He hit it low and just inside the right post from 25 yards out on the left.

A few minutes later again, Lauren laid the ball off to Bergkamp on the right wing then charged purposefully into the box. Bergkamp's cross nearly found him too but was instead intercepted for a corner. It was taken quickly and came to Henry on the 6 yard line whose shot was miraculously blocked by a defender and out for another corner. This time Henry came out of the box to recieve it and simply whacked it high inside the far corner from just outside the box in a similar position that which Reyes had scored from.

Henry burst into the Palace half soon after, and played a nice ball through the defence for Reyes' overlapping run on the left. It took him just a little too deep, but he still maneged to force a near post save out of Kiraly. In first half injury time Clichy made a great headed clearance to deny Johnson a very good chance as another cross came into our box.

Freedman missed another good chance a couple of minutes after the break, shooting a yard wide when under no pressure.

Then on 55 minutes Henry received the ball a couple of yards outside their box a little to the left of centre, and slipped it diagonally across goal for Vieira's run. The defender Hall or the keeper probably should have got to it first. Perhaps they confused each other, and possibly Hall did get a slight touch as it came through to Vieira. Either way, it got through the 2 Palace players and ended on the Arsenal captain's toe, enabling him to walk it into the net.

A few minutes later it could have been 5 after a really nice move. It started with a 40 yard run from Reyes up the left. He played it to Henry in the D whose first touch went forward to Dennis a few yards inside the box. He turned and shot in one movement only to see it go a foot wide of the left hand post.

Edu, who'd had another fine game, had to go off straight after that chance. He'd been limping a bit for a few minutes. Flamini came on.

And before Flamini had a chance to get involved Palace had their consolation goal when Johnson went down in the box under challenge from Vieira. It looked a slightly iffy decision - the kind that could cause arguments at 0-0 or 1-0 but didn't seem to bother anyone needlessly at 4-0. Johnson blasted it high and in off the underside of the crossbar. One of those that people sometimes describe as "perfect" even though it came far too close to missing.

Henry got the ball in the net on about 20 minutes but it was ruled out for offside as the cross came in. Henry wasn't offside so it was presumably given against Bergkamp (one of those ones that's hard to say if it should have been given or not, under the current interpretation of the rules).

Then there was a quick break ending with a lovely ball from Bergkamp for Henry to run onto. But instead of having a go himself he tried to square the ball for Pires (having a quiet game as he often does when asked to play on the right) and it was intercepted.

Another break ended with Reyes on the left of the box crossing to Pires on the right, whose low shot came back out of the far post.

Just after the hour there was a long ball towards Bergkamp deep on the right. At first he looked to have faild to control it sufficiently, but Dennis got hold of the ball right in the corner before cheekily beating his marker and passing back to Henry on the right hand corner of the D. He shaped to go left then moved the ball onto his right foot and curled a shot high inside the right hand post. Like all our goals, nothing that Kiraly could have done about it

Late on van Persie and Fabregas came on for Dennis and Bobby. Van Persie won a corner which bounced off Cesc's knee into Kiraly's arms.

Much has been and will be said about the fact that the Arsenal squad for this game (all 16 of them), for the first time in English football, contained no British or Irish players. Richard has set the ball rolling in this piece but there will be more, no doubt. Wenger says he doesn't think about nationalities but it is interesting that it has happened while there is all this talk of UEFA bringing back rules restricting squads.

Even more exciting is that Henry's 2 goals, in his 200th league game for Arsenal, bring him just 11 away from equalling Ian Wright's all-time club record.