I want Arsenal to win every match that they play in but coming into this one, I really wanted it even more.
Arsenal had suffered an embarrassing loss in mid-week. It wasn’t something that bothered me all that much but it was still a tough one to wear as an Arsenal fan and it would be nice to change the narrative and really forget that one.
Then there was the history of Arsenal’s struggles coming to Liverpool. There have been tough losses, there have been embarrassing losses, there have been decent draws but there had not been a regular time win there since 2012.
There has been lots of heartbreak and lots of salty Liverpool fans ready to throw it in Arsenal’s face. It felt like this was the time for Arsenal to finally get one over them and it finally did.
This will be slightly different than the normal formula but we will still break down Arsenal’s win in detail here.
Liverpool vs Arsenal: The Graphics
Liverpool vs Arsenal: The Numbers
A Defensive Masterclass or riding the luck?
Depending on what side of the red cartel you come from, you might have some different perspectives on how you’d describe this match.
People with more of a northern bent will think that Liverpool put Arsenal under a lot of pressure and were perhaps unlucky that the match ended up with this final scoreline.
If you’re more inclined to good taste and prefer a nice white accent with your red, you’ll probably have seen this as a team that got their lead and then did an excellent job looking to bend but not break. Ultimately succeeding and coming away believing that it was a great defensive performance.
There is a way that I think that you tell both stories here if you want. Compared to what Arsenal have done this season it looks decent but not spectacular. We are used to Arsenal putting in the types of defensive performances where the opposition get little of the ball near Arsenal’s goal and they are totally suffocated. That was not this performance at all.
A lot of shots, but middle of the road xG, a very busy defensive day but under quite a bit of territorial strain. Some of the numbers compared to what teams have done against Arsenal recently are pretty crazy.
57 - Touches in the box for Liverpool, this is 17 more than PSG managed against Arsenal in the Champions League final last season and that was with an additional 30 minutes of play.
46 - Touches in the box combined in the previous two matches against Everton and Nottingham forest allowed by Arsenal. Before this match Arsenal had allowed just 182 touches in the box and now Liverpool make up nearly a quarter of the total touches in the box that Arsenal have allowed this season.
247 - Touches in the final third for Liverpool. the most Arsenal have allowed this season by over 100 (previous high was 142 against Chelsea)
38 - Shots in the “shooting zone” allowed by Arsenal, the most in a match this season by a healthy margin over the previous high of 23 against Sunderland. This is the most that Arsenal have allowed in an 11v11 match since 2016 when they allowed 40 to Barcelona in a 3-1 loss in the Champions League.
This is a point in favor of the Liverpool were all over Arsenal narrative.
If you saw something like the above normally, I’d be pretty concerned but in this match, while it wasn’t especially comfortable to see Liverpool so close to Arsenal’s goal they really struggled to do anything especially dangerous with that possession. Here is what Liverpool was able to do with that.
That is a whole lot of nothing.
Liverpool did manage to get to about 15-20 yards of Arsenal’s goal and then they just hit a wall. Their final third possession wasn’t exactly “horseshoe of death” but there was a lot of try to make something happen and get repelled once they tried to breach the central areas of the box.
This is something that really shows up in the crossing numbers. In the first half, Liverpool were able to get a bit more of “their” game. After Arsenal took the lead, they were able to push the chaos a bit more and it was much more uncomfortable for Arsenal defending. Liverpool were able to get the ball into dangerous positions and the Arsenal defense was not fully settled and they got some okay looks at goal.
In the second half, Arsenal didn’t give Liverpool the same amount of chaos to try and thrive on and the crosses went from something where they were exploiting Arsenal to a we are out of ideas and just need to do something. That ended about as well as you would expect for them.
This lack of cutting edge really shows up in the shooting numbers.
In this match Arsenal ceded territory more than I think we’d normally be comfortable with but they were totally bought into “suffering” for the cause. They remained tight, they closed down space, and gave away nothing easy for Liverpool in this match.
0 - Shots where Liverpool had an open goal or were able to be 1 v 1 with David Raya.
2.2 - The average number of Arsenal players between the shooter and the frame of the goal in this match
2 - Shots where Arsenal didn’t apply pressure to the shooter. The Florian Wirtz free kick because you can’t and a Virgil van Dijk shot from 35 yards out. Every other shot by Liverpool had an Arsenal player making the chance harder to get off cleanly.
1 - Big chance in this match for Liverpool, this was the 43’ header by Alexis Mac Allister. On my xG model this was a 9% chance to be scored and was the third best scoring chance of the night.
0 - Chances that were rated as higher than 15% on my expected goals model.
0 - Shots on target for Liverpool in this match. This is the first time in the Premier League era with on target tracking that they have been held to 0 shots on target at Anfield.1
This Liverpool attack featured three players that they bought for over £100 million and when you were looking at anyone doing a combined XI, they weren’t putting any of the Arsenal attackers in that team (with Saka out injured at least). Even with the game state and all of that territorial dominance, Liverpool were held to well below their normal production.
With this context I think that this is a very good defensive performance from Arsenal. I am more comfortable when Arsenal are suffocating a team with the ball and slowing draining the hope out of them but I can really appreciate this type of game as well (as long is only happens a few times a season).
If you wanted to critique Arsenal I think you could rightly point out that they probably did not need to deviate from their original tactics so much after taking the lead. This is something that will probably get lost a bit but they were fully on top in the opening quarter of this game and were looking dangerous while allowing basically nothing from Liverpool in this match.
Arsenal before the goal came in here and had 70% possession, 89% of the field tilt (39 touches to 5) and looked like they were ready to fully take it to Liverpool. Just five minutes after they scored they nearly doubled it, coming up just a couple of inches short from a second Kai Havertz tap in.
After that they seemed to get a bit too happy to play on the counter looking for that second goal and got into a basketball up and down game. They still created their own share of danger but they totally lost their trademark control.
Some of that came back when Arsenal made the switch from Bruno Guimarães in midfield to Myles Lewis-Skelly and it did look like if Arsenal wanted to, they could have (and arguably should have) played with the intention a bit more in this match.
In the end this match looked fairly even on the stats. I think that game state plays a big role in the final counting stats but the situation where if there was going to be a winner it was more likely to have been Arsenal, but draw wouldn’t have been a shock at all.
The “deserve” to win meter agrees here as well. This takes more into account than just the xG but still comes out that Arsenal were on top here.
A win at Anfield for Arsenal is a sweet, sweet thing. I am very glad to savor it.
This is a bit of a weird one, some data providers will say that this shot was on target. That was the initial view of Opta who provides the official Premier League ruling on this but they changed it, deciding that it was going off target and the deflection is why Raya needed to catch it.