Published: 7 March, 2012
Champions League
ARSENAL 3, AC MILAN 0 (AC Milan win 4-3 on aggregate)
by RICHARD OSLEY

THERE'S that great bit in Fever Pitch – soon to be reissued as a Penguin Classic – when Arsenal need to win 2-0 at Liverpool to win the league in 1989, but it's still without score at half-time.

The main character, an Arsenal obsessive, suggests the whole adventure might as well be 8-0 to Liverpool at the break.

"I don't think that's strictly quite true, is it Paul?," his friend tells him. "If you want to win a game 2-0, you've got more chance if it's 0-0 at half-time than if you are eight goals down."

Basic maths. And, if you need to win a match 4-0, as Arsenal needed to at least do against AC Milan at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night, it helps if you are 3-0 up at the interval. And they were, and we dreamed.

With a spirit and tenacity which has at times been absent this season, the Gunners kept themselves in the Champions League last-16 tie they were given no hope of overturning right until the final seconds. It was a riveting drama to keep a continent of football fans on the edge of their seats, but there was no Michael Thomas to ride to the rescue.

By the end, the brutal fact remained that Arsenal's chase for a trophy was over for another year, and Milan were the ones booking into the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

For all the thrills from a night when we all wondered whether the greatest ever Champions League comeback, even better than Liverpool against Milan in the 2005 final, might somehow materialise, it might in cold terms as well have been 8-0 to the Italians at half-time. There's not much crueller in football than false hope, and there was mountains of it here.

The damage sustained in the first leg was ultimately unrepairable and all the Gunners could take from the pitch was admiration for their brave near-miss, pats on the back for making a game of it. They left puffed out. In truth, they had been puffed out after an hour, exhausted from chasing the game at turbo speed from the first minute.

It was almost like a machine grinding to a halt because nobody had put a 50p in the meter as the second half wore on. Of course, somebody needed to put more than 50p in the meter, they needed to put more money in to stock the substitutes bench with fearsome reinforcements for the final push. Wenger looked around in his final moments of need and could only turn to two players he has shown little confidence in this season: Chamakh and Park.

The final flare of the impossible comeback was Robin van Persie being denied from close range with a dinked finish. There was hardly another chance for the Gunners after that in the final 20 minutes. Gone was the pace which generated three first-half goals: Laurent Koscielny's early header, Tomas Rosicky's whipped finish and van Persie's penalty. Rosicky deserves more than a passing mention. A transformed player, he was at the heart of everything Arsenal did well.

"If there was no such thing as running out of energy, we might have gone and scored three more goals," defender Kieran Gibbs suggested afterwards.

There was indeed restored pride, but Wenger must be reviewing his decision not to recruit another striker in the January transfer window, given Thierry Henry's return was always only going to be temporary.

And, although Arsenal have beaten Spurs, Liverpool and Milan on the bounce, a tricky path still lies ahead if they are to qualify again for Europe's blue riband event. The players looked devastated when the final whistle blow, and, when they play Newcastle on Monday night and later tackle Manchester City and Chelsea, they must harness the power of the first half, rather than the deflation of the second. The table looks good, but, as Spurs have found in recent weeks, fortune can swing in a different direction very quickly in the Premier League.

Arsenal should take heart from the loudest appreciation they have heard all season from the home fans, who nearly all, for once, stayed until the final kick. They should take heart from Rosicky's new form and a future with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. This was another one of those heroic failures – like the Champions League final defeat to Barcelona when they were a quarter of an hour away from ruling Europe, or last year when they scored an away goal in the Nou Camp. They must make sure they are around for more of the same next term. If you have to finish fourth to qualify, it is better to be fourth with 11 goals than eight points behind. There's still time for some Fever Pitch.