Arsenal 4 Norwich City 1: So nonchalantly did Arsenal return to second place in Saturday's spring sunshine that they could have picked a few hyacinths on the way. Even Thierry Henry's second successive Premiership hat-trick at Highbury, while impeccable, was also unremarkable.

This is what happens when a team scoring, on average, a goal every 39 minutes meets opponents conceding one every 44. While Arsenal played well they played so well within themselves that the spectacle became soporific, tedious even.

Norwich, sleeping with the fishes on the Premiership's seabed, fought Arsenal to a standstill only in the sense that Arsene Wenger's players increasingly found a way through the opposing defence with a minimum of movement. When Norwich stopped running, so did Arsenal.

Henry's first two goals each involved a check to wrong-foot defenders followed by a couple of strides into space and an incisive shot. Henry's third, and Arsenal's fourth, was the result of a run through the defence by Jose Antonio Reyes before the Spaniard set up the chance even as Adam Drury's lunging tackle was bringing him down.

Everything that has been inadequate about Norwich's defending this season was encapsulated by Arsenal's third goal five minutes into the second half. Drury had ample opportunity to prevent Lauren crossing from the right-hand byline and Craig Fleming ought to have realised that Fredrik Ljungberg was coming in from the left to meet it.

At least Norwich scored with the best shot of the afternoon, a narrow-angled drive from Darren Huckerby just past the half-hour after Jens Lehmann had flapped at Huckerby's corner and the ball had found its way back to him via a sliced shot from Graham Stuart.

Arsenal have completed a league double over Blackburn, their opponents in the FA Cup semi-finals on Saturday week, but against Mark Hughes's thorny team will surely need Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp and Sol Campbell, all missing here, to be fit.

Then again Henry could still be the difference. Wenger said that after a three-week break the striker "played with his brain because he did not feel ready physically to play 90 minutes." Which was of little comfort to Norwich whose defence opened like automatic doors almost every time Henry approached.