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Part of you wondered if the embers still glowed so brightly. Is that because Liverpool were almost champions since December 2019, would that have to have some kind of negative impact? Then the results; Coming out of the Champions League was painful but excusable, losing a lot to Manchester City can happen whoever it is.
He felt the loss to Arsenal at the end of last season was a concern, and rightly so. The performance was full of errors and lacked intensity and focus. That was followed by the Community Shield in August, a game in which Liverpool went from, dare I say, sloppy to outmatched by Arsenal’s deep play outside of the champions’ press.
The Liverpool press is known for good reason. They set traps in a way like no other. However, at Wembley in August we could see why it was dangerous to face teams that are willing to play and have skill, just as Leicester demonstrated at Etihad on Sunday.
Of course, the inclusion of Neco Williams that day meant that Arsenal had an extra avenue to attack, and that they subsequently had a hand in the goal that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang went on to score. But even more so, it felt like for 40 minutes Arsenal and Mikel Arteta had Jürgen Klopp’s number, as Joel mentioned before the match.
So what changed last night? To begin with, it came down to the intensity and the looks of things. Liverpool were angry, determined to beat Arsenal after the two previous meetings where the Gunners came out on top, and it was more clearly present in their press.
Arteta has taken an approach of playing from deep against Liverpool and at the same time squeezing them when he’s in deep areas. Yesterday they were suffocated. The plan to move wide and advance in triangle patterns could not unfold as a result of the champions’ commitment in pressing numbers.
The three forwards were incredibly smart, but behind them was a line of Gini Wijnaldum, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson. Such was the commitment of Klopp’s men to go from winger to winger, that Trent ultimately completed more passes in Arsenal’s defensive third than his (10/9).
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Perhaps the most important was Naby Keïta. The influence of the number eight games has been debated recently, and while she’s notable at loading the ball less and moving it faster, it’s still an outlier in terms of her ability to defend from the top of the field.
What Keïta allowed against Arsenal was for Liverpool to press into a box of four, with him pressing hard on Granit Xhaka and at times even beyond the three forwards, as Mark pointed out on the podium. This was key for the Reds to beat Arsenal and suffocate it in its own half.
As we know, Liverpool’s use of data is sometimes unrivaled. It seems that in this case, they once again studied the latest master plan to defeat them and found a perfect solution to counter it. The importance of Naby Keïta to that particular process should not be underestimated.
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