text: Bergkamp brilliance breaks Middlesbrough - Telegraph
  Top team: Arsenal's Giovanni van Bronckhorst congratulates Ashley Cole on scoring the winner
  By Owen Slot at Highbury
  7:59PM GMT 29 Dec 2001
  Arsenal (0) 2 Middlesbrough (1) 1
  ARSENAL'S RUN continued yesterday and it has now taken them to the top of the Premiership. It may have been their Frenchmen who have taken them most of the way, but it was the genius of their Dutchman, Dennis Bergkamp, who took them the last few strides here yesterday.
  Arsenal went into this game with five wins from seven, a statistic that was reflected in their confidence. However, it took the late arrival of Bergkamp to break Middlesbrough's resistance. A pattern had been quickly established, with Arsenal camping around their visitors' penalty area and attempting to find a way into it. This was an entertaining - if frustrating - exercise because Thierry Henry and Robert Pires were full of class but no one could quite capitalise on the chances that were appearing.
  It was hardly as if Middlesbrough's defence was impregnable because by half-time Arsenal had 13 shots at goal, an array of narrow misses, underhit shots and headers glanced wide. Any one of these could have gone in, Henry twice rounded the defence and failed to find a team-mate with the cutbacks that followed and Kanu should have done better inside the box with a cross from Freddie Ljungberg.
  The closest Arsenal actually got to getting the ball into the net was when Robbie Stockdale, the Boro full-back, thumped a clearance straight into his goalkeeper which then rebounded just wide of the post.
  Just before half-time it seemed that they would finally break through when Ashley Cole's lovely pass split two defenders and sent Pires running at an angle. Pires swept the shot with his right foot and Mark Crossley just managed to get a hand to it, touching it on to his right-hand post.
  For all this superiority in the first half, however, the irony was that the only goal they successfully set up went against them. This was a horrible error from Sol Campbell from the sort of loose ball - a long, misdirected clearance from Gareth Southgate - that he normally mops up.
  On this occasion, though, he waved his right foot, as if to toe it back to Stuart Taylor, but the contact was so weak that Noel Whelan was able to run on to it and side-foot the ball past the goalkeeper.
  The relief for Middlesbrough must have been considerable as Highbury is not the place you would expect to end a goal drought. They had seen two free-kicks go close but having only scored once in the nine hours before coming here, any unexpected gift would be gratefully received.
  Arsenal's frustration, naturally, was channelled into the main part of the game at the other end and they were to remain unrewarded after half-time when another great chance fell to Kanu, again from a cross from Ljungberg, the Nigerian this time heading wide.
  It was in the 56th minute that Arsenal eventually drew level with a goal started and finished magnificently by Pires. The Frenchman had won a free-kick on the left side of the box and when the ball came bouncing out of defence to where he was standing some 23 yards out, he fired it straight back into the top left corner.
  Middlesbrough were not, of course, content to sit and admire all this and they immediately surrounded referee Andy D'Urso, complaining bitterly that Thierry had obstructed Paul Ince in order to protect Pires's shot.
  D'Urso, who had already booked Jonathan Greening and Hamilton Ricard in a game of rising nastiness, simply added the name of Ince and thus stoked further the fire.
  Kanu, Cole and Pires would all shortly follow him into the book. Pires was carded for diving in the penalty box but Cole, who has now amassed five yellows which will earn him a suspension, made amends soon afterwards by scoring the winner.
  But it took a head as cool as Bergkamp's for this to happen. The Dutchman came on for Kanu with 21 minutes to play and had been only the field for 11 of those when he saw the run from Cole towards the box and curled an exquisite diagonal cross which Cole was able to meet at full flight, heading it well past Crossley.