Owen Hargreaves curled home a free kick and Manchester United beat Arsenal 2-1 yesterday to move a big step closer to another Premier League title and push the Gunners virtually out of contention.

After Cristiano Ronaldo's 54th-minute penalty had canceled out a strike six minutes earlier by Emmanuel Adebayor, Hargreaves sent a free kick past Gunners goalkeeper Jens Lehmann in the 72nd.

United's 25th victory of the campaign puts the team six points ahead of second-place Chelsea, which hosts Wigan on Monday, and manager Alex Ferguson says his team only has to beat Blackburn and the Blues to hold on to the title.

"I said before that we needed to win these three games," he said. "We've won one of them. We've got two to go. If we win them then we are champions."

Arsenal is now nine points behind and, having been knocked out of the Champions League on Wednesday, appears almost certain to be without a trophy for the third season in a row.

"Yes, we are out," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said. "The least we can say is that for the last two months we have not been very lucky. You can see that again today. It's difficult to find an obvious reason but, with the quality of our performance, it's difficult to blame anybody."

Needing to win the game to get back into title contention, Arsenal created better chances in the first half and Adebayor wasted one with a tame shot at Edwin van der Sar after Alexander Hleb's pass had left him with only the goalkeeper to beat.

The lanky striker put the Gunners ahead soon after halftime, however, when Van der Sar and United teammate Rio Ferdinand failed to deal with Robin van Persie's cross from the left. Adebayor bundled the ball home from barely three meters (yards) with strong suspicion that it came off his hand.

It was almost 2-0 within two minutes when Ferdinand almost turned a cross from Adebayor into his own net but Van der Sar blocked the deflection and United responded by equalizing in the 54th.

Gallas blocked a pass from Michael Carrick with his hand and Ronaldo stepped up to score from the spot. He was forced to take the penalty twice because of players encroaching into the area when he took it the first time. But the Portuguese star kept his nerve and fired it past Jens Lehmann again for his 28th league goal of the season and 38th in all competitions.

"That was some pressure, wasn't it?" Ferguson said. "That was a fantastic second penalty to take. His courage and ability was marvelous."