Liverpool v Arsenal | Sat, 17:30: Page 19 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Liverpool v Arsenal | Sat, 17:30

Rohit

I can't take much encouragement from our first half display either. I don't think we did much to slow down Liverpool. Their performance in the first half hour was down to their sluggishness, nothing that we did. The moment they upped the tempo we had no answer. If this was a one off it would be easy to ignore but this happens too often.

Gazza M

top class teams have that extra gear. I watched the extended replay, and it felt like watching those games against Chelsea and united during the cesc era when they'd just go through the gears and twat us aside. and we'd assist with a healthy dose od shooting ourselves in the foot because we can't cope with the pressure.

goon

Good point, I wonder if it does just largely boil down to immaturity, men against boys etc. Feels like too much of an easy get out for Arteta but having the youngest team in the league has to have some consequences.

There isn’t really anything extraordinary about this game when all is said and done, but it did highlight areas we really need to improve on. Liverpool were not really dominant - see the game at Anfield last season to compare - but that they found it relatively easy to nullify us and just picked us off when we made mistakes and with a bit of quality is definitely disconcerting.

Qwiss

They took us apart last season when our youngest player was 23 too so I'm not sure we can solely blame inexperience.

I think its also hard to say Liverpool weren't dominant when they had over 60% possession and won 4-0. All the other stats seem to follow the same pattern. If thats not dominance I don't know what is.

Ray

Arteta should 100% have changed things after the second goal. His lack of ideas / intervention led to the team breaking down and trying the same things, when it clearly wasn't working. He should have just kept possession and kept it at 2-0.

goon

Qwiss! wrote:
I think its also hard to say Liverpool weren't dominant when they had over 60% possession and won 4-0. All the other stats seem to follow the same pattern. If that's not dominance I don't know what is.

Maybe there's a better word than dominant, but I never really felt under a great deal of pressure in the first half even if they had the odd moment. Even in the second half their 'dominance' was basically down to us repeatedly giving them the ball in our own half.

That actually makes it a little more disappointing that we were not able to take advantage in some ways. It definitely feels more like we beat our selves.

Ricky1985

Liverpool force you into those mistakes if you're not up to the task of keeping your cool and executing the right pass. Their periods of dominance usually comes through relentless crossing - with their opponents having basically all 11 players trying to defend the box and the space just in front of it, as you get hit with wave after wave. We've had that situation plenty of times in recent years. That never happened here.

The first 30 minutes it was a very even game. They edged it for possession and territory, we edged it for overloads, danergous positions and chances.

Then we made a few mistakes in our pressing and passing, they seized on that and created 3 chances before the first goal came. We then spent the next 7 minutes on the halway line attacking until the half-time whistle went.

The collapse that followed came after Lokonga and Tavares lost all composure, other players were affected but it was as a result of the chaos those two were creating. Maitland-Niles, thrown on cold tbf, was not much better when he came on.

What I was most struck by watching it back is how much football is about the quality of individuals.

The two teams pressed similarly to one another. Liverpool had the balls to push a fullback or midfielder into the press (always Chamberlain) more times than we did (Partey in the second half), but it was quite a similar structure and intensity. They made better decisions and when they got Mané and Salah into one-v-one situations, they were more dangerous than our forwards were.

The margins were finer than the eventual capitulation made it seem. The team collapsed in on itself toward the end, but it came about because a couple of individuals went to pieces, and that wreaked chaos for everyone. Tactically it was a good game, and for spells of it we gave as good as we got. They punished us brutally when we messed up. That's the story of this game.

Ricky1985

Klaus wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:
I'm also worried about Ødegaard because he doesn't cut it as a 10 for me, but the playing him deeper experiment seems to be done for now. Looking a lot like a spare part atm.

Doesn't cut it compared to what though? Maybe he's not prime Özil, but he's levels (actual levels) better than Lacazette, I can't see how that's up for discussion. Our chance creation has dropped since he got benched, we're less dynamic, the distribution is less expansive. We had him on loan for six months too before we signed him so it's not like we didn't get a good long look at him.

We need to be braver and commit to having a player in the middle of the pitch in the attacking half because we're never going to play football that amounts to anything otherwise. We signed him and now we need to play him. It's crazy to me how we can turn up at Anfield with Lokonga in midfield but Ødegaard is seen as too weak to contribute with anything.

I agree Lacazette isn't the answer to any question. I'm just not sure about Ødegaard playing so far forward. I'm talking more about the longer term here and not so much a few games.

goon

I think Odegaard is better in the final third personally, it's where his calmness and decision making really come into play. For him to work up there though you need more goals from the 3 forwards. Saka in particular needs to take his game to the next stage at some point and I think there's a strong argument for Pepe getting more mins over him until that happens.

Qwiss

Ricky1985 wrote:
Liverpool force you into those mistakes if you're not up to the task of keeping your cool and executing the right pass.

Thats exactly what they did to us.

The first 30 minutes it was a very even game.

I disagree. We never really looked like troubling them and Ramsdale was already making incredible saves at that stage.

The collapse that followed came after Lokonga and Tavares lost all composure, other players were affected but it was as a result of the chaos those two were creating. Maitland-Niles, thrown on cold tbf, was not much better when he came on.

I agree here but I don't think they ever really had much of a chance in a 2 man midfield with a not 100% Partey against Liverpools 3.

What I was most struck by watching it back is how much football is about the quality of individuals.

I thought that would be the case but its not really how it played out until we'd all but given up. Mane didn't show much quality as much as he got at us in the right areas, niggling us and exploiting our weaknesses. Their midfield outnumbered us, their forwards pressed tirelessly and in an organised fashion. They were like a well oiled machine and they systematically picked us apart.

The two teams pressed similarly to one another. Liverpool had the balls to push a fullback or midfielder into the press (always Chamberlain) more times than we did (Partey in the second half), but it was quite a similar structure and intensity.

Our press was nothing like theirs. In terms of intensity I thought we did pretty well winning the first ball for the first quarter of the game but even at that stage we were losing the second. As the game went on we started losing both and not giving them any sort of real fight.

The margins were finer than the eventual capitulation made it seem.

I don't agree at all. That game was never one we were going to win, we created absolutely nothing and they had plenty of chances.

Clrnc

Ricky1985 wrote:
The first 30 minutes it was a very even game. They edged it for possession and territory, we edged it for overloads, danergous positions and chances.

Very even is really pushing it, so was us being dangerous. Think they always had us under control and is taking their time. Agree with Gazza it was Abit like the big teams in the past just taking it easy and then kill us when needed. We never had them troubled seriously at all.

In fact we actually did better last year at Anfield. We were a Lacazette sitter away from a draw. Even under Emery we created 1 or 2 chances and tested Alisson.

jones

Ricky1985 wrote:
The margins were finer than the eventual capitulation made it seem. The team collapsed in on itself toward the end, but it came about because a couple of individuals went to pieces, and that wreaked chaos for everyone. Tactically it was a good game, and for spells of it we gave as good as we got. They punished us brutally when we messed up. That's the story of this game.

I genuinely think we watched two different games 😆

There are some freak matches that happen once every couple seasons where you have a good game and still get smashed 4-0. Saturday was definitely not one of them. Way too easy to blame everything on individuals, errors like Tavares and Lokonga maybe but our inability to create anything in attack wasn't to do with the personnel it's because our coach can't coach. Look at Ox who's as brain dead as any footballer ever and how he was able to serve their purpose while keeping it simple. Can't keep blaming individuals on the pitch for everything, why bother having a coach then if his only use is to buy good expensive players

Burnwinter

Both things can be true. The result looked inevitable, but the ugly four goal margin was conjured into being when Tavares passed Jota in.

Yes, they did have us beaten all over the pitch. Looking at possession, territory, chances, xG and so forth gives you the "structural" take but a more narrative lens is legitimate, we all saw what happened. It's a sport of variable results, and it's a shame our young team crumbled on a difficult mission.

That second half they came out pressing very hard under instruction. Alexander-Arnold commented on the success of this to the media with pleasure.

If we'd seen two halves like the first, it would've been pretty satisfactory. Get to seventy minutes at 1-0 down, their press loses energy and they're trying to figure out whether to push for another goal or sit back.

goon

Yeah I think the scoreline and the nature of the capitulation is colouring people's view on the game. You only need to go through the comments on here in the first half and half time to see it was pretty unextraordinary.

I do think Ricky is over egging just how many dangerous positions we got ourselves into though. We had fleeting moments but not near enough to really make Liverpool ever feel like they were not in control.

QuincyAbeyie

Does anyone actually not think Ramsdale was by far our best player? I'd think that alone despite losing 4-0 tells you that the result wasn't flattering for Liverpool. It's not just some Arsenal supporters having a weird view of the game either, all the pundits on Norwegian TV talked about during half time was how well Ramsdale had done to keep us in it. I think you'd be hard pressed to find supporters of other teams than Arsenal who'll say that 4-0 is more than Liverpool deserved.

goon

The bar for being our best player is pretty low though, from memory he made a couple of good saves and some would say he could have done better on the goal. But regardless I don't think anyone has mentioned anything about whether or not the score line was flattering or if Liverpool deserved such a win (or that we deserved any less).

It's more about the balance and flow of the game. Again, if you watch last seasons game at Anfield and this season, you'd notice the difference despite the fact that we were in last seasons game until the 88th min, their xG was lower and our xG was higher. Last season I felt helpless watching it, this weekend I felt like it was within reach to produce a different outcome.

Qwiss

The best you can say is that we didn't fall apart for the first half hour. Thats as good as it got though, we didn't threaten and we didn't dominate possession. We just didn't crumble, until we did.

There really weren't many positives to take away from that match at all.

Ricky1985

Just to be clear: Liverpool were comfortably the better team over the whole match and thoroughly deserved to win.

That doesn't change the fact that it was even in the first 30 minutes. Ramsdale didn't make his first save until the 29th minute, by that point we had Saka one-v-one with last man van Dijk three times, Lacazette had a goal ruled out for offside, Tomiyasu put in a super cross that Saka could easily have scored from, Fabinho made a great last man, last ditch challenge to stop Aubameyang getting through on the counter.

Liverpool had a few dangerous situations too, but we played well in that period. And that's that.

Football analysis is all outcome based, and that's fine - we got beat 4-0 and there was a period in the second half that was very disappointing. That's the take home. But for 45 minutes we created lots of dangerous situations and overloads, whilst holding Liverpool for most of the first half. The team looked good, the structure looked good, and it would be viewed very differently if the execution in one or two of those good positions had been better.

It was also very promising to see how the team reacted to going a goal down away from home against what is a very good team. Too often in the past that hasn't happened. And sure, it's hugely disappointing that we gave them the game just 7 minutes into the second half, but there are good signs there, and they shouldn't be ignored because the outcome sucked. If the analysis is to be worth something it has to go deeper than that.

I was most pleased with the way Ramsdale, White and Gabriel showed they can play out from the back against arguably the best press in football. That's promising! I also think Tomiyasu and Tavares marshaled Mané and Salah well. Yes, that sounds wrong given the damage they both did, but it all came later on when the structure collapsed. The former also showed he can make a difference going forward with that top class cross and some well-timed, rapid overlaps in the second half. The latter knocked Salah around and beat him in every race. Again, that's really promising. I think we might reslly have something good to build on with this back 5.

Okay, there's not much else to shout about, and we all know the midfleld and attack needs work, but even then it wasn't all bad, even if it felt that way.

QuincyAbeyie

An analysis doesn’t go deeper just because it assumes that if we'd scored one of our chances everything would be different. That's just guessing that Liverpool wouldn't have continued and simply won 4-1 instead of 4-0. Saka one-v-one against van Dijk never looked dangerous. Van Dijk almost never loses those even if he's in those kinds of situations pretty often.

Ricky1985

Quincy Abeyie wrote:
An analysis doesn’t go deeper just because it assumes that if we'd scored one of our chances everything would be different. That's just guessing that Liverpool wouldn't have continued and simply won 4-1 instead of 4-0. Saka one-v-one against van Dijk never looked dangerous. Van Dijk almost never loses those even if he's in those kinds of situations pretty often.

You're missing the point.

I'm saying it's possible to miss the good, promisng aspects of a performance when the outcome is very disappointing.

We were always likely to lose, we all said so before the game, but if we're trying to work out where this team is at, what parts of it are working or could potentially work, what we might expect to see moving forward as more work is done, then the outcome is mostly irrelevant to that analysis. The question is: What did we learn?

We were always likely to lose, but what did we learn about the team? And I'm sayong there were parts to be encouraged by.

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