GREAT JOY AWAITS ARSENAL IF they beat Manchester United in the FA Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium on May 21, but yesterday they achieved a greater good when they secured an automatic place in the Champions League next season. Another chance at European glory, another tilt at the elusive prize. Arsenal annexed the runners-up spot in the Barclays Premiership, barring an unlikely goal avalanche from United in their remaining two games, with a performance against Liverpool at Highbury that encapsulated their season. They started well, faded in mid-flight and then finished with a flurry.

Liverpool’s malaise away from home struck again, not only allowing Everton, their rivals, to take fourth place but also posing the question of their ability to beat AC Milan in the European Cup final on May 25. There is no leg at Anfield in which to underpin their authority, just a one-off game in Istanbul. Eleven domestic defeats on their travels this year is not encouraging.

“After first place, second place is most important,” Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said. “It gives us a better holiday and there is no room for a disaster if we were to get beaten in the Champions League qualifying round.”

Arsenal were a revelation in the first half, reviving memories of their scintillating form of early season when they stretched their unbeaten record of 2003-04. That it all ended after 49 matches and amid flying accusations and pieces of pizza at Old Trafford — and took them months to recover from it — is still not forgotten. It was an ugly, defining moment. Of late the Arsenal of old have returned. Working up a head of steam for Cardiff and the grudge match with United they have now gone 11 matches undefeated. Even Sol Campbell, the England centre back, cannot regain his place after injury, the form of Philippe Senderos, the Swiss youngster, reflecting Arsenal’s new-found solidity.

In Senderos’s previous 12 matches for club and country, the opposition had failed to score. Only when Steven Gerrard’s shot, from Dietmar Hamann’s tapped free kick, spiralled past Jens Lehmann via Francesc Fàbregas’s left ankle did the sequence grind to a halt. It was only the second goal that Arsenal had conceded in eight league games. The case for the defence more recently has been nigh on impregnable.

At least that was before the break, when the dancing feet of Arsenal bewitched slow Liverpool minds and sluggish Liverpool bodies, perhaps drained from their European Cup exertions against Chelsea; when Fàbregas, Robert Pires and José Antonio Reyes twinkled in the afternoon sunshine. Even Ashley Cole joined the party with his left-wing raids, on maybe his penultimate appearance at Highbury. Wenger again railed at the tardiness of the FA Premier League in its inquiry into the “tapping up” affair involving Cole and Chelsea. “It happened in February and we’re now into May,” Wenger said. “International wars have been sorted out more quickly.”

Jerzy Dudek had done well to tip an effort from Lauren on to the crossbar but he stood rooted as Pires’s craftily curled free kick drifted beyond him. It was the Frenchman’s fifteenth goal of the season. Four minutes later Reyes concluded the most flowing of moves with a tightly angled finish to notch his twelfth of the campaign. Arsenal had not missed Thierry Henry for a fourth consecutive Premiership outing. That he is healthy for Cardiff is what matters.

Yet as the clouds darkened and the rain lashed Highbury at half-time, probably reflecting the mood of Rafael Benítez, the Liverpool manager, Arsenal inexplicably returned to their post-pizza torpor. With Gerrard retreating deeper into midfield, Liverpool were rewarded when his drive took a wicked deflection. Hope flickered briefly but, in stoppage time, Fàbregas extinguished it when he jabbed in Arsenal’s third goal from close range.

“What is the big difference between Arsenal and Liverpool?” Benítez said. “We do not play well away from home. But maybe next season . . . we will see.”

• AC Milan, Liverpool’s opponents in the European Cup final on May 25, suffered a setback in their quest to win the Italian title yesterday when they were beaten 1-0 by Juventus. David Trezeguet scored after 28 minutes to leave Juventus three points clear of Milan at the top of Serie A with three games left to play.