While Liverpool weren’t at their best against Arsenal, they still came away with a point from one of their toughest fixtures of the season.
For 45 minutes, Arsenal got the better of Liverpool and cracks were beginning to show in Arne Slot‘s side.
Thankfully, the Reds turned things around, twice in fact, and will feel frustrated not to have pushed on to win the game after Mo Salah levelled Liverpool for the second time.
After 90 minutes of exciting football for the neutral, Slot had plenty to think about including his tactical approach, Andy Robertson‘s performance and the resilience his players showed.
3 good…
Despite conceding twice, Caoimhin Kelleher was relatively untroubled in goal.
Normally after a game in which you have let in two goals, there would be a defensive inquest as to what went wrong.
Well, with the exception of Bukayo Saka’s opener, Liverpool remained quite solid throughout the match, conceding just two big chances according to FotMob.
Liverpool kept Arsenal to an xG of just 0.92 and three shots on target across the 90 minutes.
Ibrahima Konate was the standout in that defensive display.
We can’t talk about Liverpool’s defence without singing the praises of Konate who marshalled his side of the backline with authority on Sunday.
Gabriel Martinelli wrongly thought that he could exploit Liverpool’s right side, but Trent Alexander-Arnold and Konate made sure he rarely beat his man and was dispossessed three times.
Liverpool’s French centre-half made seven clearances, six recoveries and was dribbled past just once.
Once Konate had dealt with Martinelli once and let him know, it forced the winger to rethink his approach and he was then more reserved in his attacking play in the second half.
Darwin Nunez‘s link-up with Salah was good to see.
Nunez has plenty of good parts and plenty of faults in his game, his biggest of the latter arguably being his frequent lack of composure in front of goal.
Against Arsenal, however, he bucked the general trend of the last couple of years to set Salah up perfectly for Liverpool’s second.
Many have made the point that the Nunez of last season or the year before would have perhaps blasted the chance at goal.
Instead, he found Salah in what has become Liverpool’s most prolific combination in front of goal.
The Uruguayan and the Egyptian have assisted one another 15 times, placing them in the top 10 by any pair of players for Liverpool in the Premier League era across all competitions.
3 bad…
Robertson was left exposed against Saka.
The Scotland captain will go down as one of Liverpool’s greatest-ever full-backs, but he does now look to have dropped off, even if he is still a solid option for Slot.
While Virgil van Dijk should certainly have helped more, Robertson was clearly the most culpable player for Saka’s goal, for which the youngster beat our left-back for pace and cut inside sharply to find space to finish.
In fairness to Robertson, he recovered throughout the game and Kostas Tsimikas, who has been receiving praise for his substitute appearance, he was facing a more fatigued attack.
Across the match, Robertson won half of his six duels, was dribbled past twice and completed 16 of his 22 passes.
Arsenal pursued the ‘dark arts’ and it worked to frustrate Liverpool.
Mikel Arteta’s team were surprisingly negative in their approach once they were 2-1 up. While their style of play was perhaps to their detriment in ultimately failing to win, they still succeeded in frustrating Liverpool.
At one point, Slot was even booked for voicing his frustration, though the coach claimed this was a mistake as he was actually complaining about their time-wasting to Konate, not the fourth official!
There was one point when Jurrien Timber went down and an Arsenal player kicked the ball out while under pressure in their own area.
If Liverpool had enough of a ruthless streak, they would have kept the ball from the throw-in. Konate, though, decided to honestly return the ball to the opposition.
Arteta’s approach, though, is far more Jose Mourinho-like than Pep Guardiola.
