The Bridge of sighs

So why did they all look as though they'd just missed the last tube then?

The main ingredient missing last night was the sudden-death edge that the greatest sporting occasions demand.

Dressing up an old fashioned London derby in fancy new European clothes made it no less frenetic but the drama was somehow muted by the gradual realisation that two very competent defences were going to ensure the definitive action would have to wait for Highbury.

For all the exotic overseas talent and technical excellence on view, this still somehow felt a very British affair - sort of Champions League brought to you by Bovril.

When has there been a Champions League game quite as busy as this, with such hectic, congested midfield battling offering such little time and scope for real expression - although the splendid Edu succeeded best of all?

You just knew it was going to be a bit different when Wayne Bridge powered into the box, got brushed by Kolo Toure and decided, disgracefully, not to fall theatrically to the floor.

Yet the only time when it felt as if we might be about to witness a game to match the hype came in those few minutes early in the second-half after Jens Lehmann's wanderings - what is the German for 'safe hands'? - allowed Eidur Gudjohnsen to cash in. I'd not seen the Bridge erupt so gleefully since they put five past Manchester United a few years back.

Seconds later, Adrian Mutu was denied a tap-in by Toure's crucial interception. Then Lehmann spilled a Frank Lampard strike and Damien Duff nearly converted the rebound.

As they kept pouring forward, the bloke next to me in the West Stand triumphantly trumpeted the fatal judgment 'we've got them'.

He should have known you've never got Arsenal these days. Last year's version, maybe, but the steel of this team is now every bit as striking as their artistry and cunning.

That they should survive and strike back within six minutes seemed quite routine. Yes, but Robert Pires with the decisive header? Hail a team who can simultaneously deal in predictability and surprises.

This equaliser quite knocked the wind out of the occasion just when it had been getting interesting following yet another chorus of the evening's theme tune 'There's only one Ranieri'.

How bizarre that this purely parochial affair should end up mainly as a vehicle to plea for an endangered Roman monument? Or should that be Roman's endangered monument?

At one point, the songs of praise had been bellowed out so loud that you could have sworn the Arsenal contingent had even joined the Standard's campaign to keep Claudio Ranieri in London.

Indeed, it was tempting to pop downstairs to Roman Abramovich's private box to see if he and his Russian pals might fancy one of our rosettes.

They say the man can't be persuaded by sentiment but, then, neither can Arsenal. Once they had equalised, they were at their most mean-spirited.

By the time Marcel Desailly had received his second yellow card - incidentally, was his first for slapping the ball out of Lehmann's hands the most pathetic ever witnessed in this competition? - they had already asserted a comfortable degree of control over proceedings without bothering to search for another gear.

If they are as good as we've come to fancy they are, they will doubtless find it in a fortnight's time. As for Chelsea, though, they will have to remove the impression left last night following Arsenal's clinical equaliser that their shoulders dropped.

Once again, they'll have to discover the special resilience that has marked their Champions League away-days this term. Then, eight miles up the road, perhaps we could still witness London club football's finest hour and a half.