Champions League draw: It was almost 11 p.m. but there was still a hubbub outside Highbury. A car had come to a halt in the middle of a gaggle of supporters.
Instead of screeching off into the night with the urgency of a getaway driver, as many managers would, Arsene Wenger had paused to lower the window, sign autographs and accept congratulations.
It is no hardship to linger in the midst of acclaim, but few people would have wanted to tear themselves away in any case.
Arsenal had relished an evening of redemption as well as success. It is the scares that jolt the sluggishness out of clubs and Wenger's side feel invigorated now that the 2-0 win over Lokomotiv Moscow has completed the sequence of three victories that catapulted them, improbably, into the knock-out phase of the Champions League.
England sends a strong task force into that stage of the competition, since all three clubs are seeded after topping their groups. Despite advancing together they have surprisingly little in common. Manchester United have become so efficient at negotiating this phase of the tournament that their defeat in Stuttgart commanded more attention than the garnering of the full 15 points from the other matches.
Despite a quarter-final appearance in 2000, Chelsea have a gleeful, newcomers' excitement about them this year. Despite the accumulation of famous footballers, there is a thrill to their endeavours in the Champions League. The players are as fascinated and giddy as the supporters to discover what they might be capable of together.
Arsenal, despite the superficial familiarity, are the most enigmatic of the Premiership representatives. A curmudgeon would shun the exhilaration on Wednesday and ask why such a squad got itself into difficulties in the first place. Even the comeback in Group B had to be triggered with an unlikely 88th-minute header from Ashley Cole to beat a Dynamo Kiev team that had appeared just as likely to win the game.
Wenger's side has had too many fluctuations to be trusted just yet. Last season a Thierry Henry hat-trick cowed Roma, but the club then failed even to get as far as the quarter-finals. This year, the same forward lashed Internazionale in a 5-1 drubbing at the San Siro, but followers of Arsenal have been let down before in Europe and they no longer take it for granted that standards will be sustained.
Henry himself cannot be the sole guarantor of the club's progress. The candidate for FIFA's World Player of the Year award has an unusual durability for a man of such whipcrack pace, but he only faced Lokomotiv after a fitness test and the Frenchman will be sidelined at some stage or other. Even when he radiates well-being defences will occasionally find a way of checking him.
Arsenal must tap all of their potential and they are particularly liable to flourish if the indications of resurgence in Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg are reliable.
The key men at Chelsea are harder to identify because a huge squad is crammed with candidates. It is therefore all the more noteworthy that Claudio Ranieri has developed the cohesion that characterised wins over Manchester United and Besiktas.
"When you have money of course you can buy the best players, but money alone cannot make them link together," he said.
The other contenders will hope fervently for delays in the construction of the Chelsea stronghold.
Guardian Service
