Gunners maintain flying start

Abou Diaby’s first-half double and goals from William Gallas and Aaron Ramsey helped Arsenal ease their way to a comfortable 4-1 victory over Portsmouth that took the Gunners’ tally to ten goals from their opening two league games.

Arsene Wenger’s side had delivered an impressive statement of intent with last weekend?s 6-1 victory at Everton.

And while this result against struggling Portsmouth is nowhere near as eye-catching, it underlined the Frenchman’s claim that his side can be genuine title challengers this season.

Victory was never in doubt, although Arsenal only had themselves to blame for not running up an even bigger scoreline.

For Portsmouth, the game confirmed they face a long hard battle to maintain their Premier League status and underlined the need for the south coast club to resolve the ongoing takeover issue as quickly as possible.

Arsenal followed up the Everton win with a 2-0 midweek Champions League victory over Celtic.

That result means the Gunners already have one foot in the competition’s money-spinning group stages but Wenger was clearly not taking any chances ahead of Wednesday’s return leg and made four changes.

Among those was the inclusion of Eduardo for his first league start since the striker suffered a horrific double leg break against Birmingham City in February 2008.

And having marked his return with a goal during a brief substitute appearance at Everton last weekend, the Croatian quickly made another telling contribution by setting up Diaby’s 18th-minute opener.

Denilson sprayed the ball out wide to the left flank where Eduardo skipped past Portsmouth right-back Marc Wilson with ease before pulling the ball back to Diaby, who crashed the ball past keeper David James.

Up to that point, Arsenal had struggled to break down a determined, if limited Pompey side.

But the goal had a crushing effect on Portsmouth and it took just four minutes for the home side to find another way through, this time after good work down their right hand flank.

Once again Pompey were caught out when Cesc Fabregas picked out Emmanuel Eboue and he followed Eduardo’s example in picking out Diaby, who was presented with an even easier opportunity to score and claim his second goal of the afternoon.

At 2-0 Arsenal were in total command and the only question was whether they would match last weekend?s goal-haul.

But instead of putting the game beyond their opponents, Arsenal were guilty of not going in for the kill and started carving out pretty patterns inside their opponents’ box.

And a ripple of concern ran around the Emirates when Portsmouth made the most of their first real chance and dragged themselves back into the game.

Arsenal?s defensive weak-spot is a lack of height at the back – and Pompey exploited this to the full when former Spurs stopper Younes Kaboul headed home Nadir Belhadj’s cross eight minutes from the break.

That gave Paul Hart’s side hope and they believed they should have been given the chance to draw level just after the break.

Winger John Utaka burst beyond the Arsenal back-line and was bearing down on Manuel Almunia?s when William Gallas appeared to bring him down outside the box.

The Pompey bench was left fuming when referee Steve Bennett claimed it had been a fair tackle and, to rub salt in the wound, the Gunners centre-back popped up minutes later to bundle home Arsenal’s third goal following a scrambled free-kick.

Pompey?s fight-back was over almost as soon as it had begun and Aaron Ramsey wrapped things up in the 69th minute when he collected Robin van Persie’s through ball.