Sport 28-09-2000 Arsenal Flatten Group B Favourites Lazio who: Arsenal what: Beat Lazio 2-0 where: Highbury, LONDON when: Last night snippet: "Arsenal looked like true Champions Leaguers here last night," reports The Guardian`s David Lacey from Highbury. "Two goals from their Swedish midfielder Fredrik Ljungberg, both set up by Dennis Bergkamp, stunned Lazio, the favourites to win Group B". "Slaphead Ljungberg was the hairo," says The Sun`s punning Brian Woolnough. "And the bald truth is the Gunners need just one more victory in Group B to virtually assure their place in the second phase". Arsenal scored their first two minutes before half time. "Kanu played a diagonal pass towards Bergkamp," reports Rob Shepherd in Express Sport Live, "who displayed great peripheral vision to head back across the face of the box, cushioning the ball perfectly for Ljungberg to stride on to it, rasp his shot into the top of the net and raise the Highbury roof". Lazio came back hard in the first ten minutes of the second half but Ljungberg`s second strike won the game in the 56th minute. "Bergkamp ran purposefully forward before touching the sweetest of passes towards Ljungberg," says Russell Kempson in The Times. "Marchegiani and Negro both crunched into him, but he had reached the ball first to guide it calmly into the empty net". Although Ljungberg took the glory last night, Henry Winter in The Telegraph credits Arsène Wenger`s surprise deployment of Dennis Bergkamp on the right of midfield as "a masterstroke from which the Romans never recovered". The second leg will take place in two weeks. [... more]

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