Some may think that Arsenal lack character, but the man who scored the goal that puts them into the Champions League knockout stages, three minutes from time, did it wearing pink football boots and one has to say that takes courage of sorts, at least.

Nicklas Bendtner may have approached this game in the manner of Adam Ant (“Prince Charming, Prince Charming, ridicule is nothing to be scared of”), but he left it no laughing stock, a finish full of confidence separating the teams and removing some of the pressure from Arsenal’s angst-ridden season.

Yes, taken as a whole, Arsenal’s progress was arguably the least convincing in a European competition since the days of giant, stumbling figures reducing Stuart Hall to hysterics in the water rounds of Jeux Sans Frontières but, in the circumstances, a win is a win, even if such naked pragmatism is not entirely persuasive with a trip to Chelsea looming and another title challenge poised on the cliff’s edge. This was a long way from the flamboyant football expected of this team, even without key first-choice players.

Nor did the result represent the emphatic response that might have followed a return to home turf against inferior opponents after a week of turmoil. Dynamo Kiev hit a post and spurned a wonderful opportunity with 13 minutes remaining and only once Bendtner had scored from the crudest, most direct move of the game could Arsenal afford to relax.

To win late showed determination, but perhaps Arsenal knew that the goalless draw and Porto’s victory over Fenerbahçe in Istanbul was enough to put them through by that stage anyway. Their prime concern at that time was not conceding, which would have spelt calamity, and the winner had none of their usual brio or finesse.

It had plenty of mid-Eighties Wimbledon, though, both in its simplicity and clever bending of the rules. Cesc Fàbregas, the new Arsenal captain, must have known that the ball was rolling when he launched a giant free kick down the middle of the pitch, but he would also have spotted a momentary absence of attention from Alain Hamer, the referee from Luxembourg.

That was all Bendtner needed to catch Kiev’s back line in a state of unreadiness and he outstripped Pape Diakhaté, the Senegal central defender, before finishing smartly with his left pinky past Stanislav Bogush, the goalkeeper.

Perhaps Arsenal’s cunning contributed to the frustration of Olexandr Aliyev, the Kiev playmaker, who was shown a straight red card soon after for attempting to move Hamer out of the way to enable a quick free kick to be taken. Hamer did not take kindly to being manhandled. Who would?

It was a moot point by then, anyway, Arsenal now safely in the last 16 with a game to spare, which is good going from a group that involved a daunting slog around Europe. Porto, Kiev and Fenerbahçe are not the toughest opponents, but they are challenging in terms of journey time and experience and with only Porto away remaining, Arsenal are unbeaten.

It could have been very different had Kiev taken either of the chances presented to them towards the end of each half. In the 38th minute, William Gallas was shepherding the ball down the left flank to safety when he attempted a short-cut to goal and instead ran into the path of Ismaël Bangoura, the striker from Guinea. It was a tight angle and Bangoura was up on his own but, with Gallas helplessly dispossessed, he made the best of it, striking an inward-curling shot that rebounded off the outside of Manuel Almunia’s near post, the closest either side came to scoring in the first half. With Porto already in the box seat in Istanbul by that time, had that gone in, Arsenal would have slumped to third place of four in the live group G table and the tension would have been immense.

So, too, in the 77th minute, when Artem Milevskiy was left one on one with Almunia, only to snatch at his shot, which was saved. The way that the entire stadium found itself looking panic-stricken to the assistant referee at that point says much about Arsenal’s fragile nerves. Had that gone in, who knows if Bendtner’s resolve would have held ten minutes later?

Little about Arsenal right now smacks of confidence, whatever the scoreline suggests, and even Gallas, whose words sparked the latest crisis, appears to have suffered from the fallout. He was nervy in the extreme, the first-half slip compounded by a moment five minutes into the second half when he contrived to block a goalbound shot by Robin van Persie in the Kiev six-yard box. He also suffered an early injury, clattering into Carlos Vela, a team-mate, in an overzealous charge forward. Some will call it enthusiasm; others just karma.

The palpable tension within the Emirates Stadium is a sign of the changing seasons at Arsenal. A few weeks ago this fixture looked to be a walk in the park, a match that would simply confirm Arsenal’s progress to the last 16 of the competition; suddenly, there is a chill in the air and all is very different.

Arsenal started the night top of the group and ended it there, too, but in between there were moments of great vulnerability made very real each time that Kiev went close to goal.

It was not so much that Arsenal played poorly, more the age-old problem of high possession married to low return. They had plenty of ball but not many good chances and Bogush was hardly tested early on. When he was, it was a poor show, Vela’s cross falling to Van Persie, who took an age to get it on his favoured foot and then struck his shot straight at the green-shirted figure on the goalline.

Indeed, Arsenal’s aversion to simplicity in the finish has reached almost comical proportions: on two occasions five minutes either side of half-time, good scoring chances were cleared by their own players in the six-yard box. First, a curling free kick by Van Persie was diverted over the bar by the knee of Mikaël Silvestre, the central defender, then came a goalmouth scramble in which Van Persie planted two shots from close range. One was blocked by a blue shirt, the next by the blue boot of Gallas, who hung his head in embarrassment, not for the first time, one imagines.

Arsenal (4-4-1-1): M Almunia — J Djourou, W Gallas, M Silvestre, G Clichy — A Ramsey (sub: N Bendtner, 68min), F Fàbregas, A Song, Denilson — R van Persie; C Vela (sub: J Wilshere, 77). Substitutes not used: L Fabianski, K Gibbs, G Hoyte, F Mérida, J Simpson.

Dynamo Kiev (4-3-2-1): S Bogush — Betão, P Diakhate, M Asatiani, B El Kaddouri — T Ghioane, O Vukojevic, R Eremenko — A Milevskiy, O Aliyev — I Bangoura. Substitutes not used: O Shovkovskiy, O Dopilka, G Sabljic, C Correa, M Shatskikh, F Cernat, A Yarmolenko. Booked: Milevskiy, Aliyev. Sent off: Aliyev.

Referee: A Hamer (Luxembourg).