Arsenal - 4 Charlton - 0: For most of the Premiership, taking on Arsenal at present must be rather like facing Muhammad Ali in his prime. No amount of pre-planning or studious ringcraft can prepare opponents for the bewildering combinations of jabs, left hooks and right crosses, the speed of their counterpunching or the balletic grace of their footwork.

In boxing a fight is stopped if one of the contestants can no longer defend himself. But a football referee is allowed no such mercy. Were it so, Mike Dean would surely have taken the teams off the field at Highbury on Saturday 20 minutes early for by then Arsenal were four goals up and hungering for more while Charlton Athletic's defence resembled one of those RSPCA commercials that depict abandoned mutts moping in the rain.

Charlton were spared further punishment only because Jose Antonio Reyes missed a sitter, Robin Van Persie, brought on for Thierry Henry, had a goal disallowed for offside and Dean Kiely kept out a point-blank shot from Patrick Vieira. A seven-goal victory would have been no exaggeration of Arsenal's superiority.

As it is, they continue to stride towards their retention of the title amid a deluge of goals. Henry and Reyes alone have scored 13 between them while more than half of the other teams have yet to reach double figures.

Arsene Wenger's side have now gone 48 league games unbeaten and, unless David O'Leary, an old Arsenal hand, has detected a way to defeat them by the time Aston Villa visit Highbury on Saturday week, it looks as if the task will fall to Wayne Rooney at Old Trafford eight days later.

Manchester United are in better shape to challenge the champions now that Rooney, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Rio Ferdinand are all playing.

Yet Alex Ferguson will have noted that on Saturday, even with Gilberto unfit, Wenger was able to rest Robert Pires, Ashley Cole and Edu without having the slightest effect on his team's performance.

Charlton, remembering the way they had been outplayed before half-time at Highbury in February, set out to disrupt Arsenal's movements by closing down Vieira and Francesc Fabregas in midfield. In the meantime Hermann Hreidarsson kept thumping Fredrik Ljungberg in the back like an Icelandic HGV rear-ending a Volvo.

To the extent that Charlton were not overwhelmed in the first half and saw the bruised back of Ljungberg depart early in the second their plan succeeded. Yet they were eventually swept away as surely as the clouds broke over London N5 during the latter part of the match.

All the time Danny Murphy and Talal El-Karkouri were able to maintain some sort of parity in midfield, Charlton looked capable of frustrating Arsenal or at least delaying the inevitable. Yet Arsenal were content merely to tick over and wait for the opposition to make an error.

That moment arrived just past the half-hour when Jason Euell gave the ball away on the left, enabling Henry to find Bergkamp near the right-hand byline. The Dutchman cleverly evaded Kiely's chase from goal to set up Ljungberg to finish.

At half-time, though 1-0 down, Charlton probably felt they had not done too badly. But within three minutes of the second half a sublime piece of mischief from Henry blew their confidence away.

When Bergkamp and Reyes worked the ball to Henry in the Charlton penalty area he had his back to goal and Jonathan Fortune climbing all over him. Henry could barely move, let alone turn or shoot. So he simply backheeled the ball between the defender's legs and past Kiely.

"I don't think it was the backheel that was difficult," said Wenger afterwards, "but it was difficult to analyse the thing to do. Thierry is so quick to understand what's happening around him and provide the right technical response."

Having provided the wit Henry followed up with a wallop to increase Arsenal's lead. Another minute and Reyes completed the scoring with a precise low drive from a narrowish angle.

The regularity with which Henry, Reyes and Bergkamp created chances for each other was a further measure of Arsenal's prevailing strength, while the 17-year-old Fabregas provided an apt reminder that there is more than one teenage prodigy in the Premier League.

"The gulf between Arsenal and the rest of the Premier League means that the rest have got it all to do to try and stop them," said Alan Curbishley, the Charlton manager, "and I'm including the big three or four."

It looks as if it will be all down to Rooney.