There will be a load of old cods spoken about the Roma match on the web this Thursday, quite a lot of it may even appear on this and other Arsenal websites (Ed’s Note – Guilty as charged m’lud). Certainly last night a lot of it came from David Platt and the match commentators on Sky. The bottom line is that we won. And the real point is that we were all over Roma like a rash in the first game but just couldn't finish it.

We had more possession and loads more corners due to our pressure in the return leg and yet still couldn't finish it. Had Eduardo and Walcott been two weeks further on with their fitness then I reckon we would have taken them in both matches. Italian teams are living on the past reputations of just two or three of their clubs but as I recall in the past we've seen off Juventus in European competition on three occasions and also Inter Milan, A C Milan, Sampdoria, Lazio, Roma (twice now), Torino and Parma. In fact the only Italian team to beat us on aggregate I believe are Fiorentina but that was only in the group stages. So why all the fuss about Italian clubs? They are all clearly just a load of pussycats - and are there for the taking as Manure, Arsenal and the Chavs have all just shown.

Sure we were tad lucky that Baptista is a useless lump of lard and had the miss of the game, but we already knew that he was useless didn't we? But if you really think about it one of Van Persie's misses was almost as bad. They were also very lucky that Adebayor, Fabregas and Rosicky were not fit and that both Eduardo and Walcott are still a fair way off being fully fit. That will change.

At the end of the day it matters not a jot how you win - only that you do so. And we are now in the last eight. We also know that on our day, assuming we can ever get a full team back, we can beat any of them. This includes Barca whose defence is seriously iffy and who have little or no real competition in their league. This means that whichever way you look at it, even for the most ardent of pessimists, we are just five matches away from the big one.

No wonder that both the anti-English prat Platini and that dunderhead Blatter are both out to stop the English clubs any way they can. English clubs are so far ahead of the rest of the competition that it is almost embarrassing for the rest of Europe.