Arsenal Comment: Fearless Fabregas Shows Heart That Proves Barcelona Could Be Beatable At Camp Nou

Arsenal were given a comprehensive lesson in attacking play by Barcelona and could have lost by five or six. Instead they emerged with a 2-2 draw.

Conceding two goals at home is not traditionally a recipe for success in the Champions League but the spirit the Gunners showed, led by their captain Cesc Fabregas, suggests anything is possible in the Camp Nou.

Skipper Cesc was clearly troubled by the injury sustained at Birmingham and was not moving easily, yet he never stopped working.

It's said that he is the kind of captain who leads by example rather than the fist-waving and shouting ways of many skippers. At the Emirates against Barca, he was both.

Constantly cajoling and bawling at his team-mates to work harder, you could see how much this game meant to him. Fabregas left Barca as a youngster and wanted desperately to prove he had made the right decision.

Shattered | Fab stunned after booking that rules him out of homecoming in return leg

His tackle on Busquets was fair but it earned him a yellow card and a suspension for the return leg. You could see how much that hurt the Arsenal captain, who would have been playing back in front of his family and countrymen at Barcelona. But he didn't let it slow him down. In fact, he appeared to double his efforts.

It was Fabregas who played in Clichy to cross on to the eyebrows of Nicklas Bendtner that almost opened the account for Arsenal.

Then Walcott come on to the field and made an instant impression with an impeccable Thierry Henry impression, fitted with the No.14 shirt and all.

Bendtner played him in with a perfectly-weighted lay-off and the Englishman ignited the after-burners before side-footing a low shot past Victor Valdes.

With a glimmer of hope in the air for Arsenal, Fabregas again took the fight to Barca.

Launching himself and his tired, injured body into the area, he chested down Bendtner’s header and caused enough panic to initiate contact between himself and Barca captain Carles Puyol. Perhaps the penalty and subsequent red card were harsh, but Fabregas' fiery determination to play as though his life depended on it is what made the opportunity in the first place.

Best foot forward | Cesc strikes pen that drew game but caused his injury

Having won the penalty, Fabregas promptly smashed the spot-kick with such venom that he hurt himself.

But that wasn’t going to stop the skipper from helping his team. Instead he continued to fight on to ensure Arsenal secured their draw from the jaws of overwhelming defeat.

It was a display of the utmost self-sacrifice. He was already out of the second leg, yet he put his all into every second of the game. Not his own physical well-being, nor a Barcelona homecoming or even the World Cup with Spain (had his injury been worse, for example) stopped him doing what was best for Arsenal tonight at the Emirates.

Fabregas won’t be able to play at Camp Nou, but the spirit that he displayed at the Emirates runs through the whole side.

The Gunners will be expected to receive the caning they managed to suspend at the Emirates, but this young team has such new-found belief and a reluctance to give in that they will always stand a chance of making football fantasy a history-making reality.

Don’t count Arsenal out of this quite yet. After all, whether they admit it or not, that seemed to be the mistake Barcelona made tonight at 2-0.