Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 1 Arsenal 0 in the 2025-2026 Premier League season…
MARLA Daniels in The Wire: ” You cannot lose if you do not play.”
Mikel Arteta seems determined to disprove this axiom.
The Champions against the Runners-Up. It felt too early in the season. Its energy was too much too soon in the build up. That deepens when Manchester City lose their second successive game of the season at Brighton And Hove Albion. First vs second and second look good. Second look stable. Second look ready.
But first have been alright themselves. They’ve been frisky and they’ve been serious. They’ve been ragged and they’ve not quite known each other. But they’ve shown incredible spirit in difficult times.
This Liverpool side are both full of experience and full of the new. It’s true in very literal terms – there being the best part of twenty years between oldest and youngest on the pitch in our opening games. We’re seeing players run out who were early Klopp signings alongside Slot’s latest. In some ways its ideal: the transition only works because the system is learnt, it’s passed on, the river flows.
But first-half today in possession it is clunky and mechanical in parts. And Arsenal block the passing lanes brilliantly. They are an excellent side out of possession. By being so excellent out of possession they sacrifice something in possession. By setting up to make even the riskiest passes be without reward they stifle the contest. Liverpool end up recycling and Arsenal create nothing in open play first-half.
This is the key conflict of the Arteta idea. They have their greatest strength. They show it. It prevails. But then in a game like this there has to be something more. In a first-half when Liverpool are frustrating and even with his God-like calm, Virgil is frustrated again to not push home any advantage is a shortcoming.
Arsenal were the better side for 45 minutes and they had nothing to show for it bar 45 minutes moving slowly. 45 minutes drained away. 10% more risk could have elicited 100% more reward.
But it isn’t to be.
Instead in the first-half, every time Liverpool beat the first line of Arsenal’s excellent press they are fouled. And then they go backwards. Liverpool work hard to get a free-kick which means they start again. And have to work hard again. And then get a free-kick.
Liverpool don’t use the free-kick or throw-in from anywhere 60 yards from goal to launch the ball. And what this means for Arsenal is these infringements are low cost. Not eliciting a yellow card. Not resulting in a ball to defend.
But imagine if we did launch it. Imagine what that reduces the game to. Two sides working to get 40 yards from goal and playing for a restart. It’s the reduction of the game as a spectacle.
The point about all of this is that Arsenal are an excellent side with excellent players. They are one of the best five teams in Europe. Therefore the world. But there is a reason why football is the game Europe and the world plays and why rugby union isn’t.
Liverpool were rocky first-half but other than winning corners and watching Declan Rice jog to the corner flag to take them and then the resulting pile on, Arsenal didn’t want to know.
But this is winning football. What I mean by that is that if you don’t eventually win, and win big, no one wants to know. This is not the football which actually won last year. The big two went to sides that looked to play.
However this is why the pressure is on Mikel Arteta. You do this to come second? If you played to play you’d come at least second. You could come first. You could elicit joy and awe and wonder. At their best footballers are magicians. Sorcerers. This crowd brings their own magic wands and turn princes into frogs. Truly great managers use tactics to create their structure, tell their story, leave the world spellbound. Less good managers just have tactics.
Second-half it changes. Because Liverpool change.
Liverpool find pockets and take chances. Liverpool play forward and while nine times out of ten they play into a wall, it gives the game an impetus. Liverpool want to win and have an idea how to do it.
There is also progress from Ibrahima Konate who looks much more confident today, plays with an ease that had eluded him. When he makes his best tackles he looks much more up for it, and he runs to our supporters with Steven Gerrard arms as if to say, come on, come on. As if to say take no notice of anybody else. Tell me to take no notice of anybody else.
Virgil van Dijk is man of the match – except for the extremely brilliant play and world class goal from Dominik Szoboszlai. The captain has his back line much better organised today. He looks happier all round and at times takes a charging run at this Arsenal who look surprised that anyone is trying to play with daring and dynamism, not just their boring catch-you-out set-piece play.
But Dominik Szoboszlai it is, whose intervention truly wins this game when it matters. He is clearly a good pick for right-back, and his knowledge and experience of the likes of Salah, Van Dijk, Jones and Gakpo shows. It’s his passes that start to open up Arsenal towards the end of the game. And it is his persuasion of Mohamed Salah that prevents another wasted free-kick from Liverpool.
He scores an unbelievable goal. A deserved icing of the cake for him today. On his own, no assists, when his assistance has helped the Reds rise over an Arsenal determined to grind us down. The manager says he shows what Liverpool is all about. Amen to that, Arne, amen.
A word too for Curtis Jones and Federico Chiesa. The latter is here to win. He plays for little over 17 minutes when all is done, and yet he lifts the thing. By this time, Liverpool have started to unpick the Arsenal block to our passing and things are lighter, brighter. He brings a smile and a verve to our attack after a game that has lacked much. Grazie, Federico.
Jones makes an enormous difference in part because Alexis Mac Allister is demonstrably not fit. He shows and drives and wants to get the better of his man. He wins the free-kick and then there it is. A set-piece, I grant you. But we know it isn’t the same.
You cannot lose if you do not play. I mean it isn’t true in any case. But you cannot live if you do not play and Arsenal feel weirdly lifeless by the end, despite the fact this could prove Liverpool’s toughest home game. To live, to love is to risk. To want to bring joy means you could fall on your face. To achieve the biggest prizes brings the biggest risk of not achieving them. But anything worth doing is worth doing with gusto and heart and hope.
Liverpool have been on an emotional roller coaster. But we’re used to them, I suppose. The real business starts soon. Just there. In September when the games come thick and fast. Just past the window closing.
We opt in. We choose the roller coaster. We choose to risk losing because we choose to keep playing. Keep playing Liverpool. You have three points now on North London’s finest and I’d rather our way of doing things than theirs.
I’m proud of their August. Given everything. I’m proud of Liverpool.
—
More? Yep. Today Brighton beat Manchester City and when their number 20 scored a penalty he celebrated like Diogo Jota. James Milner made it clear what Jota meant to him repeatedly, as so many across football have done.
This thing of ours is emotional and it is about shared journeys, about being and standing together. Milner shows his love in his way. He is, as ever, a credit to himself and to any football club which is his.
It hasn’t been just him. It has been across the game which should mean multitudes to Diogo and Andre’s family. But seeing that from him reminded me that we are all bound by what we have shared.
We’re lucky to have shared it. We’re lucky to have lived this now. It is a joy to be alive, my friends. And don’t you forget it.
Subscribe for immediate post-match reaction from around the ground…
