Honours even in Anfield battle of wills
Liverpool 2 Arsenal 2, 9th April 2023.
Liverpool 2 Arsenal 2, 9th April 2023.
Time, that intangible enigma that no-one is able to tame, appeared to stand still last evening at Anfield. With mere seconds of that precious commodity remaining in injury time at the end of a pulsating and chaotic game between this season’s “destiny team” and the heartbroken team they’ve now displaced to that particular moniker, Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold found himself once more in a somewhat unfamiliar position, and on an afternoon full of them. The Reds right-back was ostensibly an auxiliary midfielder, the extra body in midfield as Jurgen Klopp juggled his 4–3–3 formation into a 3–4–3 and with the chaos of the opening 40 minutes behind them, his team were now pushing for an improbable winning goal as the sands of time ebbed away on a draining encounter with the Premier League leaders.
With only time against them and roared on by The Kop, Alexander-Arnold’s simple chipped pass into the Arsenal penalty area saw a retreating, bedraggled defence in the footballing quixotic of “sixes and sevens” and Darwin Nunez executed the perfect header back across the face of the Arsenal goal and then, time stood still. Ibrahima Konate, the Reds man mountain of a central defender simply had to score and to borrow one of the oldest clichés in the footballing book “had the goal at his mercy”, but as time stood still and with Kopites behind that goal stood ready to acclaim a remarkable comeback win for the ages, the French central defender neither headed nor chested or even brutally bundled the ball home, and Aaron Ramsdale miraculously scrambled the ball away from his goal line and to eventual safety.
A minute earlier, and still within this time scrambling period of injury time, the England goalkeeper had pulled off an ever better save, flying to his right to deny Mo Salah that winning goal after a brilliantly skilful and intricate move between Thiago Alcantara and Trent Alexander-Arnold once more. Salah’s shot, destined for the top corner of the Kop End goal was even deflected on its way before Ramsdale tipped it around his post for a corner to a Liverpool team now fully on top and pressing for a win at the end of a game they should have been beaten out of sight of in the first 40 minutes by an Arsenal team now defending for their lives for a single point from a game they almost lost, and in a game they should have comfortably won.
Thus is the madness of the Premier League and the strange happenings in the time zone surrounding the famed fields of Anfield Road.
Amid the cliched “Game of 2 halves” is a stark objectivity that Liverpool were a lethargic mess for 40 minutes and aside from an albeit sweeping move on 20 minutes involving Fabinho and Curtis Jones that saw Andy Robertson screw his shot wide when he should have tested Ramsdale in the Arsenal goal, the visitors from London were majestic and fully deserved their 2–0 lead. Their opening goal on 8 minutes danced that fine line between skill, luck and a woefully large hole in the centre of the Reds defence. Bukayo Saka wrongfooted Andy Robertson before springing the ever dangerous Gabriel Martinelli through the middle of a retreating Liverpool defence and, after that slice of luck and ricochet from the boot of Virgil van Dijk, the Brazilian striker tickled the faintest of shots past his countryman Alisson Becker and into the corner of the Reds goal. The visitors second goal on 28 minutes sealed their utter dominance but critically Liverpool provided zero resistance to the simple straight ball to Gabriel Martinelli on the left wing before gifting him too much space and time with which to deliver a pinpoint cross to an unmarked Gabriel Jesus who headed easily past a stranded Alisson Becker.
Arsenal were pressing high and quicker, stronger and more tenacious all around the pitch. In short, they were playing like League leaders and pretenders to a crown they haven’t worn for two decades.
The game turned on its head either side of the half-time break and in a 15 minute spell Egyptian striker Mo Salah could have bagged a hat-trick. The Reds needed a goal before the break and on 42 minutes Salah provided a morale boosting tap-in after a brilliant move involving Diogo Jota, Cody Gakpo and a deft reverse flick from Curtis Jones into the continuing run of Jota. The Portuguese striker’s square ball into the Arsenal penalty area was miskicked by Jordan Henderson but into the path of Salah, and he simply couldn’t miss. A handful of minutes into the second half the anointed “Egyptian King” did miss, again, from the penalty spot, for a second penalty miss in succession and on 55 minutes, after a surging run and cross from Andy Robertson, Salah was once again denied, this time with a smart clawing save from Aaron Ramsdale in the Arsenal goal.
The one-way traffic of the second half was broken just once by an Arsenal team keenly aware that a third goal, and a 3–1 score line, would have secured all 3 points, but captain Martin Odegaard’s long range shot on 74 minutes presented a simple save for Alisson Becker in the Reds goal, and 13 minutes later, his team were deservedly level. Yet again it was Trent Alexander-Arnold taking centre stage as first he cheekily “nutmegged” Arsenal’s Oleksandr Zinchenko before delivering a perfect cross that cut out the entire Arsenal defence. Rising highest of all beyond the far post was Roberto Firmino and his header levelled the scores at 2–2 to signal that frantic finish full of brilliant saves from Aaron Ramsdale and that moment caught in time when it stood completely still, and a thoroughly beaten looking team could have won, and a dominantly winning team could have lost.
So honours even it was.
I can’t help but cast envious eyes at the incredible progress made by this Arsenal team under Mikel Arteta and a turnaround in footballing fortunes I didn’t see coming for many years. But here they are, this season’s “destiny team” trying to usurp the power held by Manchester City and a position once held by my beloved Reds of Liverpool. They succeeded too, to a pun intended point, but the roles were reversed yesterday and have been all season with Arsenal the only challenger to Manchester City’s dominance and Liverpool a pale shadow of a team that came within a single Premier League point and the width of a Parisian goalpost from winning the quadruple.
Yesterday was the culmination of a week Jurgen Klopp called a defining one, with games against our newest foes from Manchester City, our bitter adversaries at the turn of the century Chelsea, and yesterday an Arsenal team we’ve tussled with over major honours for as long as I’ve followed the Reds. From the defining week we have the starkest truth of all: Just 2 points collected from a possible 9 and a drab uninspiring draw with a woeful Chelsea sandwiched by being outplayed for a game and a half by Manchester City and Arsenal.
With 9 Premier League games to go, the Reds sit 8th in the League and a distant 12 points away from a place in next season’s Champions League.
Time is being called on this incredible team and Jurgen Klopp must be given the same time to build another.
Afterword from The Boss, Jurgen Klopp, courtesy of www.liverpoolfc.com
“The reaction was top, obviously. Going 2–0 down is not so cool. The first goal was, I would say, kind of unlucky; Robbo slips, they go inside and then it’s two rebounds — I’ll have to watch it back, but that’s how I saw it in the first place. In the end, Martinelli gets a foot on it. That’s the 1–0. The 2–0 happened in a situation which we shouldn’t have had that often: not the cross and the ball in, that the ball arrives there and we didn’t have a challenge beforehand. So, for that we needed a higher last line — that was a massive subject all of the time. I understand with the threat they are on the wings with Saka and Martinelli speed-wise that it doesn’t feel massively comfortable but we have to do it anyway. In the moment when we started getting more compact, line higher, midfield closer, front three together it was not as easy anymore”.
“Then the goal is the most helpful stuff in football because then before half-time it’s 2–1 and I think everybody felt we can turn this game around. That’s what we actually did performance-wise, result-wise halfway. The question I had in my mind when I walked in after the game was, ‘How can we not win this game?’ But we didn’t. It’s a point and that’s OK. It’s another step in the right direction I would say. It’s the first time in a long time we reacted really well, we didn’t fall apart”.
“We lack consistency and confidence, these are the two things and now why don’t you have confidence? Because we don’t have enough positive moments and if you have them then you don’t build on them or you misunderstand them — that’s in life like it is in football, exactly the same. So, we have these ups and downs in games and over the season. That’s something we didn’t have ever before, since six or seven years, but we have it this year and that’s obviously the situation we are going through. It’s not cool, it’s not something we wanted, but we go through this and I said it before the game: you don’t sort it overnight”.
Thanks for reading. There is a wealth of past and present articles on Liverpool FC within my library here or alternatively, here are my three most recently published articles from this season:
Reds grab a fortunate point from a miserable game at the Bridge
Chelsea 0 Liverpool 0, 4th April 2023.medium.com
April Fools Day Massacre
Manchester City 4 Liverpool 1, 1st April 2023.medium.com
Montaña de Madrid demasiado empinada para Rojos galantes
Real Madrid 1 Liverpool 0 (6–2 on aggregate), 15th March 2023.medium.com