Arsenal 3 Aston Villa 0

Martin O'Neill was right to warn the Premier League's army of pundits not to read too much into his team's sobering crash at the Emirates Stadium yesterday.

But the Villa manager cannot escape the fact that 40,000 fans will head for Villa Park tomorrow wondering whether Arsenal's 3-0 romp opened the first cracks in his team's challenge for the coveted top four finish.

The stadium will be packed out for the visit of Liverpool which climaxes a December schedule which has seen Villa once again seduce the faithful into believing that this season's push for that vital breakthrough of Champions League qualification carries more substance than the previous campaign.

But that belief was shaken to the core by the nature of Villa's tame collapse against one of the teams they must get past for the right to join English football's elite. It was a laboured surrender which offered worrying echoes of the team's fall from grace a year ago and will once again raise doubts about the true strength of O'Neill's squad as the season turns past half-way.

The Villa manager says it is deeper than before but that is not borne out by the facts. His first team, give a Carew here or a Sidwell there, is set in stone and built on familiar pillars who yesterday looked as if they were running through Sahara-dry sand while their opponents scorched by them.

Arsenal were half a yard quicker all over the pitch; so much fresher and fluent that it was impossible not to wonder whether the demands O'Neill places on a comparatively small pool of players is already pulling at aching calf muscles.

Whether the Gunners technical superiority established this dominance, or whether it was the beginnings of the fatigue which brought Villa to a standstill over the second-half of last season, we wait to see and tomorrow's Liverpool test will provide the first clues.

But it was worrying to see Arsenal so comprehensively loosen the bolts which have locked down Villa in recent weeks, sending them into this game with the best defensive record in the division and six wins from eight unbeaten games.

Those "familiar pillars" - Dunne, Warnock, Cuellar, Milner, Petrov, Agbonlahor, Heskey, et al - strove manfully to hold back the red tide which came at them with increasing purpose. But they could not withstand Arsenal's wonderful football - and when the game's deciding moments arrived, the difference between the two camps was painfully highlighted.

While Arsene Wenger was able to turn to Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott for fresh lines of approach early in the second half, O'Neill took off Emile Heskey and brought on John Carew. Arsenal's switch in personnel settled the game; Villa's barely amounted to a footnote.

As it turned out, Fabregas was only on the pitch for 27 minutes but scored his team's first two goals, the second of which prompted another hamstring problem which prevented his starting this match and forced him to leave it early. But what an impact.

He provided the deadlock-breaking strike with a stunning 65th minute free-kick, clipped over Villa's wall from 25 yards and into a top right-hand corner out of reach for the despairing Brad Friedel, before putting the game beyond Villa by finishing off a typical counter-attack set up by the galloping Walcott.

There was a theory abroad after the game that a 3-0 scoreline, clinched by Abou Diaby's precision finish from the edge of the area after a 90th minute stroll through Villa's exhausted central midfield, flattered the Gunners.

That, however, veers towards dangerous complacency from Villa's perspective. Aside from a little 15 minute patch in the first half, O'Neill's men carried little or no threat towards Arsenal's goal and the moment that they fell behind and left themselves exposed in pursuit of a route back into the game, a three-goal defeat always looked likely.

Gabby Agbonlahor willingly chased lost causes but was too frequently isolated from his support players; Heskey had a fine game - if you enjoy seeing centre forwards heading ball clear in their own area and charging around winning tackles in midfield. But at the end of the pitch where he should conduct his specialist business, he was non existent.

In midfield, Villa were limp with Petrov and Milner too busy running towards their own goal to make any in-roads in the opposite direction, while wide players Ashley Young and Stewart Downing were a huge disappointment.

As O'Neill conceded, Villa were never tidy enough in possession to deprive Arsenal of the ball long enough and some withering match stats bear out the point - a massive 62-38 percentage of possession count in Arsenal's favour along with a 19-7 goal attempts tally.

Only three were on target from Villa compared to the dozen from the home side, one of which required a particularly impressive save by Friedel to deny Andrei Arshavin just after the hour.

But back to O'Neill's valid point about the dangers of reading too much into this first real setback since November started with defeat at West Ham.

Villa fans will recall the stirring performance - arguably the best of last season - against the same opponents on this same weekend a year ago.

O'Neill's point is that this defeat should not be treated with any more significance to Villa's prospects than the exhilarating 2008 display proved to hold for last season's.

We shall all be watching tomorrow night hoping he is right.

By Martin Swain