Birmingham - 0 Arsenal - 3 In football breeding counts. Birmingham City wore blue shirts on Saturday but the blue blood belonged to Arsenal who won to the manner born and extended their unbeaten run since the opening day to 13 matches, setting a record for the Premiership.

Compared with the all-time record for outstanding starts, shared by Leeds United and Liverpool, who have each gone 29 games before losing, the statistic looks puny. Yet the sight of Arsenal playing so well in spite of losing six men to injuries or suspensions was awesome enough.

Even if the upper-class twittishness at Old Trafford which brought bans for Ray Parlour, Patrick Vieira, Martin Keown and Lauren had been avoided only Parlour would have been fit to face Birmingham.

The way Arsene Wenger was able to improvise, reorganise and still come up with such a sublime performance said much for the depth of quality in his squad even if his options appeared slim. Thierry Henry was superb, Dennis Bergkamp rejuvenated.

Birmingham are harder to beat this season. Before Saturday they had kept clean sheets in eight league matches out of 12. In Premiership terms Steve Bruce's team are upper lower middle-class, living proof that there is a mere sliver of difference between fifth and 15th.

Arsenal on the other hand reminded St Andrews of the chasm that lies between the top three and the rest.

"For 80 minutes we were in the game and we matched them," declared Bruce and so long as Arsenal's lead was restricted to Fredrik Ljungberg's fourth-minute goal there was always the chance of Birmingham taking something from the afternoon.

As for matching Arsenal, Bruce was right to the extent that his side enjoyed ample possession, frequently won territorial advantage and created a comparable number of scoring opportunities. Yet what Birmingham managed to achieve with the ball, with any space won or chances created, simply did not belong on the same pitch.

Birmingham's approach, as with so many of Arsenal's opponents, was conditioned by the threat to their defence of the Premiership's answer to the SNCF's train a grand vitesse (TGV). As David Moyes, the Everton manager, observed after his team had lost to a 10-man Arsenal in August: "Henry occupies all the players at the back on his own."

Henry's speed and his frequent banishment of the offside trap to the museum of ancient football contrivances tend to root opponents in their own half. Even when they were chasing the game Birmingham took a long time to get players forward in sufficient numbers to lend Mikael Forssell something more than the sporadic support he was getting from David Dunn.

Until Robbie Savage began delivering quick, accurate centres from the left the threat to Arsenal's goal was minimal. Had Forssell's header, from Savage's cross, been a fraction straighter the scores might have been level with 25 minutes remaining and certainly at that point Birmingham's effort was promising them some reward.

However, Henry provided the decisive pass in each of Arsenal's three goals. He almost stumbled over a ball from Bergkamp before touching it through for Ljungberg to put them ahead.

In the 80th minute, with Birmingham caught upfield following a corner, Henry launched Bergkamp on an unchallenged run from inside his own half which he completed with a cool flick over the advancing Maik Taylor. Two minutes from the end he set up a simple goal for Robert Pires.

Bergkamp's return to form stole the show, just, but Wenger will resist the temptation to put the Dutchman, who has a fear of flying, on a night sleeper to Milan for tomorrow's Champions League game against Internazionale, a game where he will also definitely be missing Vieira, Keown and Lauren, when Arsenal's defence, excellent though it was at St Andrews, will surely face a more stringent test.

Wenger afterwards praised the unselfish play of Henry: "Thierry was involved in all three goals and that is just as important to me as him scoring goals for us.

"I like it very much when a striker opts to give the final ball to another player to complete the finishing, especially when he has not already scored himself.

"Sometimes they are generous like that when they have already been on target themselves but Thierry was only thinking of the team.

"It was also a confidence boost for us to know that when he doesn't score, other players can get in on the score sheet."

As for his side's unbeaten start, Wenger said: "I'm very happy. When I look back every game has been difficult and the team have shown remarkable strength and been focused in every match.

"There is a kind of strength about this team when they are in trouble and I am very proud of them."