There was a section of opinion before this tie that suggested Arsenal would need to grind it out, that the 1-1 from the BayArena had left the tie delicately poised, that a team built on defensive solidity might struggle to open up a Leverkusen side with nothing to lose at the Emirates. Eberechi Eze had other ideas.

His goal in the 36th minute was the kind that stops conversations. A clipped pass from Leandro Trossard found him on the edge of the area, he controlled it on his left foot, shifted his weight, and curled a right-footed shot into the top corner with the kind of assurance that makes the difficulty of the action invisible. It was the goal that killed the tie, and everyone in the ground knew it the moment it went in.

The scoreline flatters Leverkusen in the sense that it suggests a competitive evening. It was not particularly competitive. Arsenal finished with 12 shots on target to Leverkusen's two, and for long periods the visitors looked exactly like a team that had already been beaten in the first leg and knew it. Granit Xhaka, playing against his former club, was peripheral. Florian Wirtz found pockets of space in the first half but was gradually squeezed out as Martin Zubimendi and Declan Rice tightened their grip on the midfield.

Rice's goal in the 63rd minute was exactly what you would expect from him at this point in his Arsenal career: he collected the ball 25 yards out, took one touch to set himself, and drove a low right-footed shot inside the near post before the goalkeeper had finished making his decision. It was his ninth goal of the season in all competitions, and it confirmed something that has been quietly becoming obvious since August: Rice is not just a defensive midfielder who occasionally gets forward. He is a genuine goal threat from deep, and opposition teams are not yet accounting for him properly.

Arsenal are in the Champions League quarter-finals for the third consecutive season, only the third time in the club's history they have managed that. The opponents are Sporting Lisbon, with the first leg in Lisbon on April 7. Viktor Gyokeres, who came off the bench against Leverkusen and who spent four years at Sporting before joining us in the summer, will return to his former club as a Champions League quarter-finalist with Arsenal. The story writes itself.

Leverkusen, for context, have now been eliminated from all seven of their Champions League round of 16 ties. We are not the first team to beat them in Europe, but we did it with something approaching ease, and that matters. The 3-1 aggregate scoreline does not fully reflect how comfortable the tie felt by the end of a very good Tuesday evening at the Emirates.