The headlines for this game will rightly belong to Cesc Fabregas after his 26 minute cameo performance was enough to put Aston Villa to the sword and deny us a grand slam of victories over big four teams. In fairness though, Villa weren’t exactly setting the world on fire when the Spaniard stepped on the pitch with just over half an hour to go and a victory didn’t appear likely. When the Spaniard left the pitch with 6 minutes to go, possibly having aggravated the injury that kept him on the bench for the opening whistle, he’d practically secured the Gunners the 3 points with 2 quality goals.

The home side achieved the rare feat of carving Villa’s defense open inside the first 5 minutes and a more confident Eduardo would surely have opened the scoring, or at least given Friedel some real work to do. Villa responded by kicking into life and applying some pressure of their own for a spell during the second 10 minute period of the game. That was quite possibly the only real period of dominance we enjoyed during the game.

Although it remained scoreless at the break and Villa had shown signs of how dangerous they could be, it has to be said that Arsenal had clearly been the better side. However, with this Villa side’s attacking prowess on the break and Arsenal looking somewhat disjointed at times without Fabregas, you couldn’t count Villa out from taking the lead in the second half, even if it may well have been against the run of play.

However, before the game reached an hour old Arsene Wenger decide to roll the dice by bringing on Fabregas and his influence was immediately obvious. Andrei Arshavin, who had been muzzled almost to the point of anonymity up to that point, suddenly sprang into life and it was clear this duo were going to give the Villa back four nightmares.

Martin O’Neill responded by replacing Emile Heskey with John Carew in the 63rd minute, perhaps signaling an intent of bypassing the midfield battle altogether. If only it would be so simple to keep Fabregas out of the game.

And so it was in the 65th minute when Fabregas won himself a free kick he barely deserved with a trailing leg left for Richard Dunne’s pleasure just outside the area. Fabregas dispatched it himself with a text book effort up over the wall and back down again, leaving Brad Friedel no chance. A goal that no one watching the game would failed to sense coming.

To Villa’s credit, they soon recovered their composure and genuinely pushed to get back on terms. However, their somewhat disjointed attack didn’t really improve and the toothless offensive display would have done little to give the home support much concern. Ashley Young wasn’t give much time, space or quality ball to work with, but when he did have the ball he was horribly wasteful. His 55th minute booking will keep him from playing in the game against Liverpool on Tuesday and based on this performance he’ll scarcely be missed.

Martin O’Neill returned to form of removing one of the full backs, this time Luke Young, to bring on a midfielder. Fabian Delph received a rare run out by coming on for the last 15 minutes with James Milner slotting into right back. I won’t be alone in my concern about this tactical move, but I don’t think we looked particularly like getting back on terms in any case so I’d struggle to accept that it cost us the game. It was already lost and we’ll never know if we could have scored in other circumstances.

However, Arsenal and Fabregas dealt Villa the killer blow in the 81st minute with a breakaway goal straight from the Aston Villa play book and there’s possibly some mileage in arguing that it derived from the makeshift Villa system. Milner was sloppy in possession and a long ball perfectly played to Walcott allowed the speedy youngster to intelligently feed Fabregas at pace who expertly beat the advancing Friedel in the box to make it 2-0 and game over.

Wenger may yet be left to count the cost of that goal as three minutes later he needed to withdraw Fabregas with young Ramsey coming on to replace him. Gooners will be hoping it was precautionary, their opponents will be hoping it’s more serious after this display served to highlight Arsenal’s reliance on the midfielder.

With Fabregas off the pitch again Gabby showed signs that he might just be able to work some magic in the last 10 minutes or so, but as the final whistle loomed the Villa side looked drained and short of ideas. Abou Diaby added insult to injury just inside extra time with a somewhat speculative effort hit from just outside the D that nestled in the bottom corner with Brad Friedel helpless to stop it. A goal Arsenal hardly deserved at that stage and may serve to bring Villa’s confidence crashing back down to earth.

Martin O’Neill has but a couple of days to pick his players back up off the floor and have them ready to face Liverpool at Villa Park on Tuesday. They may not have to face Fabregas, but an in form Gerrard and/or Torres will definitely be a major danger.

Today may have been disappointing, but to retain some perspective it’s worth remembering that we have taken 9 points from 12 against the big four during the first half of the season and we’d all have gratefully accepted that before a ball was kicked back in August. Liverpool represent the first game of the second half of the season and let’s hope we set out to show that we’re better than this 3-0 defeat says.