Arsenal are accustomed to going to Lancashire and leaving bruised, battered and beaten. At Turf Moor last night, they suffered another chastening defeat in the enclave of England they like least, only there was nothing about the opposition reminiscent of Blackburn Rovers or Bolton Wanderers at their beastly best.

Arsenal’s kids were simply outplayed by a Burnley team whose football was as splendid as anything that their illustrious rivals had produced in the Carling Cup this season and there cannot be a side more deserving of a place in the semi-finals of a competition that continues to rediscover itself after a long malaise. It is the first time Burnley had reached a significant semi-final for 25 years.

Having beaten Fulham and Chelsea in the previous rounds, Owen Coyle’s team were always going to provide Arsène Wenger’s young pretenders with a stiff challenge, but it was the manner of their victory that most impressed. Seldom has there been a better advert for the Coca-Cola Championship.

The latest products of Arsenal’s burgeoning academy have been fêted as something special, but Jack Wilshere, Carlos Vela and company were put firmly in the shade by a confident group of players who surely will make a sustained push for promotion to the Barclays Premier League this season.

“I like to think we are competitive but not overphysical and we try to play,” Coyle said. “Arsenal are the yardstick for other clubs that want to play with freedom and terrific interplay and we had all of those things.”

Among so many outstanding performers, it almost seemed unfair to pick out one, but on the basis of this performance at least, Liverpool and Celtic must be cursing the fact that Kevin McDonald rejected them in the summer in favour of joining Burnley for £500,000 from Dundee.

Only 20, McDonald was inspired, scoring both goals in either half and controlling the midfield with all the poise and panache of a proven top-flight performer. “He is 6ft 3in but elegant and he will be capable of playing in the Premier League for a long time,” Coyle said.

McDonald’s second goal in the 57th minute was a particular beauty, collecting Chris Eagles’ throw-in, brushing off the attentions of Mark Randall and stroking the ball into the bottom corner with the outside of his right boot.

Martin Paterson, the young Northern Ireland forward, was no less impressive while Graham Alexander provided a masterclass in the midfield anchor role and Brian Jensen was outstanding when called upon in goal.

Wenger pointed to Arsenal squandering six one-on-ones, with Vela and the lamentable Nicklas Bendtner particularly culpable, but such statistics served to flatter a team who seemed positively taken aback by the industry and invention of the home team’s play, not to mention the intensity of a vociferous crowd.

Turf Moor is an intimidating place at the best of times. When a cosmopolitan bunch of kids plucked from around the world and brought to a finishing school in North London constitutes the opposition, however, the atmosphere turns positively hostile, as an Arsenal team with an average age of 19.9 quickly discovered.

As the cold bit and the crowd roared, it almost felt as though lambs were being fed to bloodthirsty lions but the only groans emanating from the Arsenal manager will have centred only on his team’s inability to retain possession and dictate the play, even though he claimed, somewhat ungraciously, that it had been Burnley who had been “chasing the play”.