What a game of football that was. We got to see Liverpool at their most dangerous and Liverpool at their absolute worst as we get no closer to knowing whether the Premier League trophy will be draped in red or blue ribbons.
Barclays, eh? Liverpool 2-2 Arsenal was what Our League is all about. Jurgen Klopp’s side started very poorly as the Gunners purred, but one incident between Granit Xhaka and Trent Alexander-Arnold poked the bear and gave Mikel Arteta and his players a huge scare.
Arsenal got straight to work with Gabriel Martinelli facing up against Alexander-Arnold within the first 60 seconds. Had Trent successfully dealt with the Brazilian, it would have been celebrated like a goal by the Kop, but he didn’t; he got rinsed as Martinelli won an early corner. At least he didn’t get rinsed and concede like he did at the Emirates in the reverse fixture.
History did end up repeating itself as Martinelli opened the scoring. Andy Robertson slipped, giving Bukayo Saka the chance to drive into a dangerous area, play a one-two with Martin Odegaard, which Virgil van Dijk failed to clear as the Brazilian winger poked past his compatriot Alisson. Robertson nearly made amends soon after but missed a huge chance you would expect any of the Liverpool front three to score.
Arsenal were clearly trying to isolate Robertson and Alexander-Arnold with their constant switches of play and who could blame them? In one-on-one situations, both home players were struggling to have any joy. Exposing Trent once again helped Arsenal double their lead in the 28th minute. It was worryingly simple for the visitors, who took a free-kick in their own half, played one pass to Granit Xhaka, who played a ball over to Martinelli with Trent in a spin cycle, and it was one Gabriel to another as Jesus – on Easter Day nonetheless – headed in.
Arteta’s men remained in cruise control, but Xhaka did something very silly: awaken the sleeping Anfield crowd. He left one in on Alexander-Arnold, who reacted and Xhaka – who should have just walked away – squared up to the Liverpool right-back and got the home crowd all fired up, just like Arteta did when he tried to fight Klopp in this fixture last season. The Sky commentators couldn’t believe their luck. Yes, Xhaka shouldn’t have reacted, but they would obviously overdo the whole ‘Granit Xhaka is an unreliable hothead’ narrative.
Only a few minutes later, the awoken crowd celebrated a goal as Mohamed Salah cut…
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