Dynamos launch a late surge to light up Bridge

"A miracle of deliverance" was the old man's term for Operation Dynamo, and a relieved Arsene Wenger could be forgiven for sequestering the phrase after such an unlikely comeback.

As a global showcase for the self-alleged Best League In the World, on the other hand, the best to be said of this witless, nervy struggle is that it suited the weather beautifully.

There are times for breathless passion and pulse-raising thrills, but what you really want on as grey and lifeless an afternoon as the early English winter can provide is cosy, drowsy warmth.

Shortly before the first goal, my wife rang from Dorset to report that the family was settled in front of an old Alastair Sim movie, and this monochrome match struck me as a footballing equivalent.

It trundled along with genteel irrelevance, enlivened by the odd fetching cameo (here a swerving run from Jose Bosingwa, there a cute little flick from Nicolas Anelka), and you could drop off for a few minutes knowing there'd be no need to deploy the Sky Plus rewind feature to catch up on the plot.

If the match officials took the notion too literally, snoozily cocking up every important offside decision, so did Arsenal's dozy keeper Manuel Almunia whose sloppy throw-out gifted Chelsea the chance to induce the own-goal that gave the home side a narrowly deserved half-time lead.

And that, so it appeared, was that. With the Sky boys dwelling on Chelsea's failure to concede a single second-half goal all season, and with Arsenal emerging more lacklustre than ever from their dressing-room chat with Wenger, a further 45 minutes of pleasurable torpor looked assured.

Only a quarter of an hour later, with the game absolutely bereft of excitement, did it become apparent which Sim film we were watching.

It wasn't my wife's choice of Laughter In Paradise (that was the full-time feature, with Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant giggling at the legacy they bequeathed). It was Scrooge.

For even as the clock struck the hour, an early Christmas present arrived to transform the spirits of all concerned. God knows how referee Mike Dean and his assistant failed to notice Robin van Persie was offside, because he was so far distended from the nearest defender that he might as well have been in Rotterdam.

My best guess is that each official had borrowed one of Wenger's legendarily myopic eyes. But once the Dutchman had lashed in the equaliser and steered home the winner a few minutes later, you sensed that if Arsenal were the beneficiary of just one more defensive leak, a phalanx of anti-terrorist coppers would storm the pitch and cart the lot of them off to Paddington Green.

This twist was both utterly unexpected and perfectly unsurprising. Arsenal, much more combative after going in front as the confidence began to flow back, had given little hint that they could turn the game on its head.

Yet so limitlessly quixotic is this team, who beat Manchester United with ease and then lost to Aston Villa and Manchester City, that even human history's second worst tipster (after C4 Racing's resident eighth wit Derek Thompson) gingerly predicted this result here on Friday.

Chelsea are the opposite, rolling over mediocrities while struggling against Big Four rivals and a second home defeat so soon after Liverpool ended that fabled unbeaten run will have the alarm bells clanging like Jacob Marley's spectral chains.

Having said that, and whatever the spouters of hyperbolics might claim, this is less a genuine crisis for Luiz Felipe Scolari than the result of losing such key personnel, to injury and suspension, as Ricardo Carvalho, Didier Drogba and Joe Cole (who should be quarantined at once, to avoid the risk of adding a groin strain to his ankle injury on the return, from the Aussie jungle, of the breathtaking Carly Zucker).

As for Wenger, for all the relief he is too smart to allow a slightly flattering result to sucker him into premature elation, because his team remain a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma, and at least a year from developing the maturity to sustain a title challenge.

For all that, this was his day. Arsenal's luck turned under the captaincy of Cesc Fabregas and finally they managed to protect a lead. This win doesn't mark the end of Arsenal's problems, to borrow again from Churchill, and it may not even be the beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning, and if so all lovers of exquisite attacking football of the kind we saw little of in this satisfyingly melancholic encounter will raise two V-shaped fingers to that.