Arsenal brush aside Celtic in Champions League play-off

Arsenal assured their place in this season's Champions League group stages with a commanding 3-1 win over Celtic at the Emirates Stadium.

The Gunners were without their captain Cesc Fabregas who was missing with a hamstring injury but still to the chance to rest Robin Van Persie, knowing that Celtic faced an uphill task to progress after last week's 2-0 defeat at Parkhead.

Although Eduardo da Silva poked the ball just wide early on, the balance of play was fairly even for the majority of the opening stages, with attempts on goal from both sides few and far between.

Despite their two-goal advantage, Arsene Wenger's boys were far from their fluent best with Celtic's midfield duo of Scotts Brown and McDonald working hard to disrupt the English side's rhythm.

Both of the North Londoners goals last week having an element of fortune about them, tonight's opener continued that lucky trend. Eduardo went down after minimal contact between himself and Artur Boruc in the 28th minute but did enough to convince the Spanish referee to award the home side a penalty, much to the Celtic 'keeper's obvious fury. The Croatian striker then dusted himself down to calmly slot his spot kick past the Polish international stopper.

McDonald thought he had equalised after tapping in a clever ball behind the Arsenal defence from Marc-Antoine Fortune. However, the goal was disallowed as he was rightly adjudged to have been offside.

Just before half-time, Eduardo was in the thick of the action again, with his curled effort having Boruc at full stretch. From the resulting corner, Niklas Bendtner should have done better than head wide when unmarked at the back post.

After the interval, Wenger seemed to have encouraged his team to go out and express themselves more, safe in the knowledge that they had a three-goal cushion to fall back on.

The Gunners' trademark fluidity and fluency was clearly in evidence in the 53rd minute as Emmanuel Eboue finished off a delightful Arsenal move firing home right footed to score his first European goal.

If the tie was not already over, then the second goal on the night and fourth on aggregate certainly ended the game as a contest. Soon after, Tony Mowbray, the Celtic manager, withdrew Aiden McGeady and Shaun Maloney, no doubt with half an eye on the Bhoys weekend fixture against unbeaten Hibernian.

Andrey Arshavin then slotted in a third goal in the 74th minute, almost immediately after coming on as a substitute, underlying the home side's second half dominance.

From then on, the Scottish side knew they were condemned to the consolation prize of the Europa League and began to look very tired and drained. Chances and openings presented themselves more regularly for Arsenal, whose youthful midfield drove them on in search of a fourth goal.

There was to be no fourth goal, in fact it was the Glaswegians who scored a spectacular consolation goal through Massimo Donati. With the very last kick of the game, the Italian midfielder volleyed home a diagonal ball, to score a goal that was reminiscent of Paulo di Canio's flying volley for West Ham some years ago. It was a fitting reward for the Bhoys' loyal supporters to take with them on the long trip home on a night when they saw their team exit the Champions League with more of a whimper than a bang. But the Scots will feel aggrieved at the nature of the home side's opening goal that set Arsenal on their way.

Despite conceding late on, the Gunners could content themselves that they had done more than enough to progress and can now look forward to taking their place in tomorrow's draw in Monaco for the Champions League group stages.