Song & Van Persie Take Us Through

Fantastic result at the Emirates tonight as Arsenal defeated Dortmund 2-1, which means we're through to the knockout stages of the Champions League. And it was Alex Song and Robin Van Persie who saw us through.

Van Persie had the goals (who else?), but the man-of-the-match for me was Song. Our excellent defensive midfielder put in a world-class performance tonight. One minute he was covering the back four and winning and excellent tackle, and the next he was slithering past defenders with ease and setting up Van Persie to score.

I thought the first goal was superb. Following an outstanding piece of individual talent from Alex Song, he lobbed the ball perfectly-placed onto Van Persie's head and our captain fired home an excellent header. It was the strike of a centre forward really, the header pointed straight for the ground, always the hardest place for a goalkeeper to defend.

The second goal was good as well, with Vermaelen nodding the ball back to find Van Persie again, who finished with aplomb. Dortmund's goal back was unfortunate, and did reflect their excellent first half, but we really deserved the clean sheet as this was a game where we actually played quite well defensively I thought.

Of course, much of the credit for our good defensive display has to go to Alex Song who cleaned up excellently again and again, but really every one of the back four played well. Perhaps Andre Santos ventured forward a little to much, but he tracked back decently. Mertesacker and Vermaelen were excellent.

So overall it was a great performance for the lads tonight. Dortmund did well to try to shut us down with their pressing game, but the team responded with a bit of grit and determination, and as soon as we found ourselves in front the game was never going any other way. This is the kind of performance that's going to take us places this season, especially in the second half.

And I can't say enough about Van Persie. We're still a month away from Christmas and RVP already has 17 goals in all competitions! Shades of Thierry Henry perhaps? Certainly seems so to me. We're fortunate to have Europe's top striker leading us to victory match-after-match, and may it long continue.

The result should give us a bit of confidence and a feeling of strong momentum heading into this Saturday's clash with Fulham at the Emirates. I'm excited: the team's actually performing really well right now. What a turn around from the beginning of the season, eh?

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