match report – player ratings – Video
In the preview on Sunday, I wrote about the Liverpool game being one that you use as a marker for progress. After what we saw yesterday at the Emirates, we can be sure that this Arsenal team is on the right track. There’s still a long way to go this season, you don’t earn anything in October, but we know from bitter history that you can lose your way early in the season and spend a lot of time and energy trying to catch up.
As Ben White quietly said afterwards: “This year is different.”
Mikel Arteta caused a surprise in the starting eleven with Takehiro Tomiyasu at left-back as Liverpool continued their 4-2-4 formation, starting with Jota, DÃaz, Núñez and Salah together. It meant that the Japan international was facing directly Salah, a man who has caused us so much trouble over the years. When he was taken off in the 69th minute, it was after the calmest performance I’ve ever seen from him against us. Tomi deserves great credit for the quality of his own display, which was bordering on perfection, and if there were any eyebrows raised before the game about Arteta’s selection, after the game it has to be said that he nailed it.
Arsenal, of course, got off to a blistering start. For a second it looked like a bad touch from William Saliba might get us into trouble, but he recovered it and we took the ball to Bukayo Saka on the right. He moved on, passing it to Martin Odegaard, whose pass inside the defender to Gabriel Martinelli was perfect, allowing the Brazilian to take it in stride and shoot past Alisson before there was a minute on the clock. It is now the 10th Premier League game in 12 that Liverpool have conceded the first goal, which in a way speaks to the problems they are having at the moment.
Liverpool claimed a penalty for Gabriel’s handball in the 15th minute. I think when a player is hit from such close range it’s always hard to give a penalty. The concept of someone’s hand being in an unnatural position on the box is another foreign one to me. When you’re adjusting and stopping and starting at a pace, you have to use your hands, but while I wouldn’t have liked it because it was such a close range, you’ve definitely seen them given.
And to be fair to Liverpool, they had a good run in that first half. They got ahead in terms of possession and there were warning signs ahead of the draw. A deft move saw Saliba intercept close in on goal, forcing Aaron Ramsdale to save, but a few minutes later they played it back and equalised. It was a pretty hopeful punt from Trent Alexander-Arnold, and I don’t think Gabriel handled it well enough. Saliba took off to the right, the center went between his legs and Gabriel could not go back in time to prevent Núñez from making it 1-1.
By the way, I don’t know if this is his signature celebration, or something that was aimed specifically at Arsenal fans yesterday, but this morning he looks like a real dork.
I admit I was looking forward to the halftime whistle. Midfield was a problem and I felt that Arteta had some things to work out at the break. The 5 minutes of added time almost felt dangerous, and when Liverpool got a free kick, I looked for us to clear and then go in and regroup. We made him clear, but then we produced another good counterattack that led to Bukayo Saka getting ahead of us. Martinelli led the charge, Liverpool made a mistake at the back and the ball crossed to Saka to make it 2-1. What a moment to score and how deadly that break was.
Whatever the coach said at halftime, it worked. We were much better. In midfield Thomas Partey and Granit Xhaka gave us more control and we had chances. Odegaard should have done better after he opened up in front of him, and it was a costly miss when Firmino equalized a few minutes later. I love Saliba as much as anyone else, but he is still 21 years old and there is still a lot to learn. He lost track of the Brazilian running down his back, and the shot to the far corner with his left foot was very good.
While it was an illustration of how good Liverpool can be and how quickly they can hurt you, it wasn’t a reflection of the second half as a whole. The stadium was silent when Tsimikas brought down Gabriel Jesus (and I think it was quite deliberate when you see it from this angle), but he found his voice again as we pushed for more than just a point against a team that has hurt us so much. . in recent years. That in itself tells you a lot about the mentality at Arsenal at the moment.
I mentioned Salah’s retirement, which threw me off a bit, even if he was having a hard time against Tomiyasu, and sometimes a substitution can embolden the other team. I think that’s what happened. We saw Jurgen Klopp take away his best player, a talismanic threat, and we stepped on the accelerator. We started causing all sorts of problems for them, especially between the right-back and the centre-back, and the relentlessness of it led to the penalty. I think it’s probably a bit soft, the kind that a local team usually has, but we’ve seen a lot of decisions like that at Anfield over the years. What happens, etc., etc.
Bukayo Saka stepped forward, and I don’t know how long it will be before what happened at the European Championship will be irrelevant, but it should be soon. The fact that he was confident enough to score one that day speaks volumes about the confidence he has from the penalty spot, and since then he has scored some very good penalties against Chelsea, Man Utd and now Liverpool. I get why it’s mentioned, but as much as I was nervous about the context, I really thought he was going to score. Alisson did the thing of standing a bit to the side to entice Saka to go to his right. It didn’t matter that the goalkeeper went the right way, it was a hard-hitting penalty and the ball had hit the back of the net before he had finished diving.
3-2.
And deservedly so based on the performance of the second half. As an advantage, it’s always precarious, and as I mentioned, Liverpool showed with Firmino’s goal how quickly they can hurt you, but as we played those last 12 minutes, plus a LOT of stoppage time due to Jesus’ previous stoppage, I wasn’t too concerned. There is clearly something wrong with this Liverpool team. Whereas before they would have reacted, pushed like crazy to win the ball back and not given us a moment’s peace, they were unusually passive. We had long periods of possession, something that would not have happened before. Whether it’s a team getting old and running out of power, or something else, it wasn’t what we expected from them.
However, it felt like a long time before the referee blew the final whistle. There was an injury-time stoppage after Gabriel Jesus’ bravado saw him caught between Alisson and van Dijk, and something happened that the FA are reportedly ready to investigate. We’ll wait and see what they say before passing judgment on it.
At 97’49 the match ended, the noise from the stands erupted, Arteta went crazy on the sideline with hugs and a powerful ‘LET’S GO!’, and Arsenal were back on top of the table. Liverpool’s recent record on us had felt like a jinx at times, but mostly it was because they were a brilliant team and we were a work in progress. Sometimes progress is slow, but here we are. And here is the best in the league.
Later, Mikel Arteta said:
The feeling of winning is so powerful and so meaningful to me because I saw a team that I feel I identify with a lot, the personality that they show in difficult moments, how they stick to what they have to do, and at the same time they believe they have the courage and the free mind to go for it and attack them and put them under pressure.
If the coach identifies with the team, there is no doubt that the fans do too. I guess that’s blindingly obvious to say, but it’s worth mentioning because we’ve been through periods where it really hasn’t. This current iteration is the result of a lot of hard work, more than a little patience, and the connection between the team and the fans is something that has been carefully cultivated. Ultimately, it is what they do on the pitch that nurtures and sustains it, but it goes further and results and performances like yesterday’s ensure that relationship.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple of people this morning. I think the collective performance was very good, but in Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka we have two outstanding young players who were instrumental in that victory yesterday. Martinelli terrified two Liverpool full-backs from start to finish, while Saka’s two goals were, I think at least, the reward for a player who hasn’t been at his best this season but whose form wasn’t as bad as some. They have suggested. . He now has 3 goals and 4 assists in all competitions, 7 goal assists in 11 games, and that bodes well for when he finds his best form.
For this team it was a great victory. If your ambition is to fight for a title, you must know that you can beat the best, and Liverpool have been exactly that for a long time. You take three points, but you also take trust and faith, and those things are not in short supply at Arsenal at the moment. It was a marker, it showed that we are a team to be taken seriously, and now it is up to us to uphold the standards we have worked so hard to establish this season.
Not to mention it’s fun right now, and this is something we should enjoy while it’s happening.
—
Right, that’s all for now. James and I will be recording Arsecast Extra this morning. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra, or if you’re an Arseblog member on Patreon, leave your question on the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord. server.
We’ll have the pod for you by lunchtime. Until then.
