Unbeaten Arsenal blaze back from brink

Arsenal - 5 Middlesbrough - 3: It was not enough for Arsenal to make their mark by pulling level with Nottingham Forest's record of 42 League matches undefeated. They also had to sear the memory of this game itself into the mind. Splendour will always count for more than statistics.

Middlesbrough, with an improbable burst of goals by Joseph-Desire Job, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Franck Queudrue in a 10-minute spell on either side of the interval, had led 3-1. Arsenal's weaknesses were bared then, but that only uncovered a feverish excellence.

It will be left to pedants to mutter about Arsenal's defending. Everyone else who spilled out into north London was babbling over the sheer spectacle. Beforehand, Arsenal had received a cheque to reward their disciplinary record and a trophy to mark the unbeaten passage to last season's title, but they need no help to foster a sense of occasion.

We are watching a team unleashed. Arsene Wenger, admiring of the formidable durability being inculcated in a so-far reserved line-up at Stamford Bridge, called Chelsea "the opposite of Arsenal". He had a neatly turned phrase to sum up his own side's win: "On a day when we defended badly we compensated by being offensively remarkable."

There should be a pause, though, to note that the visitors were without their regular centre-backs Gareth Southgate and Ugo Ehiogu. This is not the place to try to muddle through. Steve McClaren was still entitled to think Middlesbrough might have held on to a 3-1 lead "seven or eight months ago" and he sees "a certain invincibility" that has arisen in Arsenal since then.

Wenger's team will of course, prove fallible sooner or later, but at present they are not to be denied. He conceded this was as close as Arsenal have come to defeat in the 42-fixture sequence.

"We were on the ropes at 3-1," he said. "It could have gone either way. The togetherness in the team and the individual quality helped us to bounce back. I am very proud of the strength we showed."

His squad seethes with talent and the manager, asked if it will be difficult to reinstate the captain Patrick Vieira once he is fit again, had to say gently that Cesc Fabregas, at 17, cannot keep his place throughout an attritional campaign. Vieira will be back in a week or two, but Wenger confirmed Sol Campbell will not be back until after England's 2006 World Cup qualifiers with Austria and Poland next month.

His absence is a concern for Arsenal but you would not have guessed that for most of the first half. In the eighth minute, Dennis Bergkamp shot against goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, Freddie Ljungberg had his effort from the rebound cleared off the line and Jose Antonio Reyes hit the loose ball against a post.

Middlesbrough fell behind in the 25th minute when Reyes found Henry with a 60-yard pass and the Frenchman met the ball with a lob over Schwarzer.

A rout appeared imminent when Henry clipped the bar with a free-kick, but, almost immediately, Middlesbrough were on level terms. After 43 minutes, Queudrue nutmegged Gilberto, cut inside Fabregas, swapped passes with Hasselbaink and fed Job. The brutal drive was to be the first of three shots that beat Jens Lehmann at his near post.

The second of them came four minutes after the interval. Pascal Cygan failed to cut out Queudrue's crossfield pass and Hasselbaink ran free on the right to finish with brutality. Queudrue increased the lead, confounding a goalkeeper who had lost his sense of position by straying too far towards his far post.

This lethal spell might have been traumatic for Arsenal. After all, there had been periods when Middlesbrough posed no danger at all and one wondered, in particular, how a footballer of Gaizka Mendieta's renown could make such bad use of possession. Wenger's team, though, were not paralysed by their plight.

Within a minute of Queudrue's strike, Bergkamp had been given room to fire low past Schwarzer from the edge of the area. After 65 minutes Mendieta lost out to Reyes and when Henry turned Michael Reiziger to fire the ball across the six-yard box Robert Pires sidefooted to an open net.

Reiziger was in more trouble within seconds when Reyes escaped him to smash a Bergkamp ball across Schwarzer to re-establish the lead. When the substitute Stuart Parnaby chested the ball carelessly to Bergkamp in stoppage time, the Dutchman released Pires and Henry then touched in the cut-back.

In all likelihood, Forest's proud record achieved in the 1970s will be superseded when Arsenal face Blackburn Rovers at Highbury on Wednesday. If you believe Wenger's claim that his squad was affected by international duty and shortage of preparation before overcoming Middlesbrough they might be even perkier then.

ARSENAL: Lehmann, Cole, Cygan, Toure, Lauren, Ljungberg (Pires 61), Fabregas Soler, Silva, Reyes (Flamini 78), Bergkamp, Henry. Subs Not Used: Van Persie, Almunia, Hoyte. Booked: Bergkamp. Goals: Henry 25, Bergkamp 54, Reyes 65, Pires 65, Henry 90.

MIDDLESBROUGH: Schwarzer, Queudrue, Cooper, Riggott, Reiziger (Parnaby 74), Boateng, Parlour, Mendieta, Zenden (Nemeth 78), Hasselbaink, Job. Subs Not Used: Maccarone, Nash, Doriva. Booked: Zenden. Goals: Job 43, Hasselbaink 50, Queudrue 53.

Referee: S Dunn (Gloucestershire).

Guardian Service