Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Arsenal 2 Liverpool 2 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season at The Emirates…
WHAT a funny game.
It’s rare to see the games be quite this discombobulating.
Liverpool were much the better side to 1-1. Arsenal the dominant force between 1-1 and half time, which takes in 2-1.
Then, five minutes after the break notwithstanding, Liverpool were very on top; Arsenal deliberately reactive. This, to me, is the oddest period.
Post-equaliser, the game could go either way.
Why do Arsenal hand Liverpool the initiative? Ultimately, the issue is this:
These men are cowards.
This is reductive. This is cheap. This is unnecessary.
This is also just true.
Away at Arsenal is our second hardest game of the season and twice we fall behind and on neither occasion do they look to finish us. On both occasions, they instead look to manage the situation.
Managing the situation has been something good teams have done since the year dot. But some situations are best managed by virtue of going for the throat.
It gives me no satisfaction to say it, but Liverpool were there for the taking and Arsenal decided instead discretion was the entirety of valour. They wanted to see out what they should have killed.
These men are cowards.
Reductive. Cheap. Unnecessary. True.
All the odds were in their favour and they chose to play safe. And then the second half was Liverpool’s. Wave after wave of Liverpool. Inevitable Liverpool. Liverpool too good to allow dead to be played. Liverpool too active, too certain.
If Arsenal want sympathy, they’d have played the tempo of the game better with Odegaard. If Arsenal want sympathy, they’d have had a better shape with a more conventional centre back.
But if Arsenal truly want sympathy then they need to be prepared to gamble the house to win, especially when the odds are in their favour. But they aren’t. They will gamble nothing.
These men are cowards.
Ibou Konate puts in his second best ever performance for Liverpool; his second best ever performance against Arsenal. He won every battle given. It was obscene. He stood up and was counted. He was the best player on the pitch by a million miles.
Alternatively, both full backs struggled. Bukayo Saka should not come as a surprise. And yet, that said, Trent Alexander-Arnold was having an awful day and then suddenly played the ball that led to the second equaliser.
Darwin Nunez had done all of his best work in our half and then suddenly played the ball that led to the second equaliser. Mo Salah had struggled for space and then suddenly had the second equaliser on his plate and he gobbled it away.
This was the truth of the enterprise. That the small margins existed in both performance and outcome and didn’t just exist, but were emphasised.
The truth of the game is that these are amongst the eight best teams in the world. Therefore, the end of the match is almost a bit unedifying.
I’d have given an organ for a draw prior to kick off, but when it goes 2-2 I’m all in on this being Liverpool’s day. The game, though, gets put in the fridge while all of my instincts are about being certain.
I need to be honest with you; I despise the game being reduced to set plays. I adore the modern game – so much of it looks like Brazil 1970. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.
So much of it sees an additional runner on the outside. So much of it sees people gamble into the box, back their technique all over the pitch, find a yard and drive a ball home from 20 yards. Manchester City score so many goals from just outside the area.
I’m not against modernity. Quite the opposite.
But I am against knowing the name of set-piece coaches. I am against the idea that top quality sides, the best sides, playing for freekicks 40 yards from goal. I am against celebrating that sort of cleverness. I am against *plays*. Against an American-style adoration of the set piece setup.
Too much of the game, under this manager and his man who came before was about finding a setup and going from there in regular play. But you roll with those punches.
I am just against celebrating blockers (Alexis Mac Allister who was otherwise poor today) and offside cleverness deciding not who stays up, but who wins the league. This isn’t the essence of the game.
And I am in favour of the essence of the game. Arsenal are a smart group of big lads who can look after the ball like nobody’s business, a side who should win today – who abdicate responsibility to a different side, who therefore should win today – a side full of vim and vigour until they find themselves punched out.
I’m delighted with the draw. Delighted. Would have been before a ball was kicked and was stunned to see so many Anfield Wrap-types think a win was just there.
What do I know? What do any of us know? These men were indeed cowards. The points were there. But this is our second hardest game of the season and we emerge unscathed.
This isn’t a neat piece of writing. Apologies for that. I am pleased we got the point I would have been delighted with at 8am; frustrated we didn’t do the decent thing and almost irritated this gang, who are in year three with City, didn’t have more about them.
I am happy with Darwin Nunez and irritated we didn’t get more of it in their half. Happy Virgil van Dijk scored and annoyed he isn’t closer to Andy Robertson for their opener. Delighted with the manager, but annoyed there wasn’t more Arne Slot first half.
We’ve got what we deserved. Let’s parley it into everything.
These men, these cowards shouldn’t be our business.
So let’s make it so.
I was the opposite: I wanted a win before the game and was happy with a draw based on the fact that I couldn’t name a liverpool player who played well. Konate best of a bad bunch but still below his best (I thought). It looked like a performance begat by insufficient rotation. We looked shot midway through the second half and most of the greys played with as much colour as those shirts, as lively as a Theo Walcott soundbite. God is that boy dull, however much he waves his hands around.