One Step Into the Quarterfinals...

What a satisfying night. After the disappointment of the nil-nil draw on Saturday which I really didn't feel like reviewing, the lads have done us proud again with a quite impressive 1-0 victory over AS Roma in the first leg of this Champions League Round of 16 fight.

In truth, the scoreline didn't reflect the game at all. We had a good six or seven chances tonight that were not put away, and so it could have been four or five. In all honesty though, perhaps the chances fell to the wrong men. Three great ones came in for Bendtner, with his first touch ruining two and poor fishing causing him to miss the third. And then the other great chance fell to Eboue. Need I say more?

But despite the misses, we got the breakthrough we deserved when Van Persie was dragged down inside the area and duly slotted home the ensuing penalty. In truth it was a rather soft penalty, but after the injustice of last year's penalty decisions in our tie against Liverpool, I was never going to be one to argue. Perhaps we had gotten back what we had deserved last April.

After the penalty we just continued to dominate the game and we looked good the whole night. One may wonder how we could have had such a dramatic turnaround from how we played at the weekend, but I never doubted it for a second. First of all, our game is more suited to European football. English teams just stick 10 men behind the ball and defend for 90 minutes: European teams actually play football against us, and when we can play a proper football match, we usually win it.

Also, there was the usually raising of the game by the players. For some reason, year after year, the players seem to raise their game and play so much better in the Champions League than in the Premiership. I think this is because of simply the prestige of the event: young players are more prone to try harder when they think the match is important. And try as he might, Arsene Wenger is always going to have a hard time convincing these youngsters that a game against Sunderland is as important as a game against one of the best sides in Italy, Roma.

But now with this win, we are in the perfect position. Coming into the night, I knew that keeping a clean sheet had to be the priority. If we scored, great, and we have done, but the most important thing was not allowing an away goal. Mission accomplished.

Now in the second leg, Roma will be forced to attack us. Hopefully our defense will withstand the inevitable onslaught, but I see this as an opportunity, not a problem. When teams attack us they open up, push up, and become more stretched. When this happens, we suddenly find ourselves with so much more space to work with. And when we have space we are dangerous; very dangerous.

So I think we've got ourselves a win-win situation in the second leg. If Roma don't attack us, we win, simple as that. If and when they do, we attack them back, use the empty space, and score ourselves, thus giving us an away goal. Just one goal in the return leg, and Roma will have to score three to beat us. And with the current state of our defense, that's highly unlikely.

Time to buy a quarterfinal ticket then? Not yet: the job isn't quite finished. But we have taken a massive stride towards qualification tonight. Don't forget, you can get all the Fab 4 Arsenal news and views sent direct to your mobile phone for free, please Click Here for details on how to try out this great service! Until next time,

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