FULL TIME: Liverpool 3-3 Arsenal
And that’s that! A stunning first half of football. The second was a bit quieter, as that only contained Giroud’s Bergkampesque goalscoring swivel, and Allen’s calm late equaliser. Some match. And a fair result: both teams were brilliant in patches, not so clever in others. Arsenal stay top, albeit only on goal difference from Leicester City, who won at Spurs tonight. The aforementioned Robert Huth scored the winner there. Liverpool drop to ninth, but that late equaliser will make them feel a little better with Manchester United coming to town at the weekend. Another 3-3 draw? You wouldn’t bet against it, the way this week has gone so far.
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90 min +2: The snow’s pelting down at Anfield now. The crowd are in fine voice. Is there to be one last twist? Unlikely, as Firmino, in a good position deep on the left, curls an aimless ball into Cech’s arms. No team-mates in the box at all.
90 min +1: There will be three added minutes, though most of that first one was taken up with celebrations. Caulker’s been dropped back into the defence now, by the way.
GOAL! Liverpool 3-3 Arsenal (Allen 90)
... and Moreno witlessly clanks it into the wall. But no matter! Because Liverpool recycle the ball. Moreno, deep on the left, hoicks a diagonal ball into the area. Benteke rises by the right-hand post, heads down, and Allen, bursting into the box, guides a fine finish into the bottom left. Liverpool deserve that from weight of pressure as much as anything else. Klopp goes off on the rampage down the touchline.
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89 min: Clyne runs at the Arsenal defence with purpose, attempting a one-two with that man Caulker. Koscielny sticks out a leg, and that’s a free kick in a central position, just outside the D. A very dangerous situation ...
88 min: Ozil is replaced by Arteta. But what about this for a substitute? Caulker comes on for his Liverpool debut in place of Lallana - and he’s going up front! Shades of Robert Huth in the Champions League semi all those years ago.
86 min: Ibe comes in from the right at pace, and takes a shot. It’s deflected out to the left of goal by Flamini. The corner’s hit long, and Toure can’t keep it in play on the far side. Anfield’s pretty quiet now, apart from the far corner where the Arsenal fans are in party mode. Klopp won’t be best pleased.
85 min: Now it’s Arsenal’s turn to knock it around the midfield. They don’t go anywhere, but then they don’t have to. The clock is their friend, and they’re running it down very cleverly.
83 min: Liverpool pass it hither and yon, back and forth across the midfield. But Arsenal are holding their shape in the professional style, and once Henderson eventually tries to release Firmino down the right, the flag goes up for offside.
82 min: Liverpool make their second change. Allen comes on for Can.
80 min: Ozil, out on the left, wands another magical cross towards the far post. Ramsey is waiting to smack the ball home, but Mignolet comes off his line and punches clear with conviction.
79 min: Ibe dribbles around in the Arsenal area, up and down the right-hand side, for what seems like an age. It’s a fine duel with Monreal. Eventually the ball’s worked into the middle, where Benteke and Lallana were waiting. Arsenal half clear. But there’s another corner. And after another elaborate set piece, the ball eventually finds its way to Benteke, in space down the left. Instead of turning and shooting, a la Giroud, he hesitates and passes backwards. The move fizzles out.
76 min: Can, on the edge of the Arsenal D, dinks a pass down the inside-left channel for Lallana, who should get a shot away. But Mertesacker comes across to block the ball out for a corner. The set piece is an over-elaborate nonsense, and a complete waste.
75 min: Moreno has another shot from distance. This one nearly clears the Kop. Arsenal make a double change. Walcott and Campbell are sacrificed for Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gibbs.
73 min: A bit of snow coming down now. It’s a very pretty scene. Especially if you’re an Arsenal supporter. Benteke tries to make a bit of space for himself on the left-hand corner of the Arsenal box. His eventual shot is a half-hearted affair.
72 min: Ibe exchanges passes with Firmino down the inside-right channel. Ibe’s got space in the box, and looks for Lallana in the middle with a low fizzer. But Mertesacker anticipates and intercepts. Brilliant football all round.
71 min: Moreno has another blast from distance. It’s blocked easily enough. Liverpool are building a little pressure here, though.
70 min: Clyne crumps his boot on Campbell’s shin as the Arsenal striker looks to break down the left. It’s accidental, but he’ll need to watch himself, as he’s on a booking. The referee tells him to be careful.
69 min: Benteke’s first touch is a pass slipped out wide to Moreno, who whips a cross to the far post. Firmino goes up and causes enough bother to earn a corner. The set piece finds Moreno to the left of the D. He smashes a low shot inches wide of the left-hand post. That’s been deflected, and from the second corner Moreno’s cross is headed wide right by Firmino. Cech wasn’t bothered, but that’s a little bit better from Liverpool.
66 min: Henderson flashes a desperate shot over the Arsenal bar from 20 yards. Liverpool swap Milner for Benteke, who desperately needs to make a personal statement tonight.
65 min: Arsenal are allowing Liverpool to knock it around the middle of the park. The minute it comes forward, all channels snap shut.
63 min: Firmino cuts in from the left. He’s got Lallana ahead of him, and a chance to send him off towards the box, but his pass is hit too hard, and behind his team-mate to boot. Liverpool already look anxious. It’s just not clicking for them right now. The first 20 minutes seem a long, long time ago.
62 min: Local resident Rafa Benitez is in the stand. I wonder what he thinks about this Liverpool defence.
60 min: Apologies for any brevity during the last few minutes. A crashed computer. No doubt shocked by the sheer violence of Giroud’s second. It was a lovely finish. Liverpool are trying to come back at Arsenal, but it’s all baroque stuff around the edges of the area. Any passes sent into the danger zone are being mopped up easily enough by the Arsenal back line.
58 min: Arsenal are all over Liverpool now. A free kick 30 yards out is smacked straight into the wall by Ozil. Then Walcott sashays in from the left and nearly works space to shoot. Liverpool are hanging on here, all of a sudden.
GOAL! Liverpool 2-3 Arsenal (Giroud 55)
Bellerin bowls down the right. The ball is fed into the area where Giroud swivels, 12 yards out, and buries a stunner into the left-hand side of Mignolet’s net. What a finish! Arsenal lead for the first time!
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54 min: Clyne is booked for a cynical handball as Monreal tries to break past him.
52 min: Walcott dribbles down the right now. He’s got men either side, with Liverpool light at the back, but hangs on too long and allows Sakho to block. A real chance to send a team-mate clear into the area there.
51 min: Walcott is allowed to start a dribble deep in his own half down the left, and finish it with a shot just outside the Liverpool D. No challenges. His low shot is weak and squeaks wide of the left-hand post, Mignolet having it covered.
50 min: Ibe, Clyne and Milner press Arsenal hard down the right. The away side are on the ropes, but a daft Can challenge sends Walcott needlessly to the floor, and the pressure is released. It’s raining quite heavily at Anfield now.
48 min: And now there’s a chance for Liverpool. Milner dribbles into the Arsenal area on the right. He fires a low cross towards Firmino, who dinks the ball on for Moreno, on the left-hand corner of the six-yard box. He should score, but blasts over the bar. This could easily already be 3-3.
And we're off again!
Arsenal get the ball rolling for the second half. No changes. Ozil is quickly sent into space down the left. From deep, he swings a gorgeous dipping cross towards Campbell, on the right-hand edge of the six-yard box. Campbell, under pressure from Moreno on his shoulder, leans back and volleys wildly over the bar. Not an easy chance, but a chance. What a cross from Ozil!
Half-time entertainment. Yes, this fixture has a habit of churning out the stories all right. In lieu of no more crazy action for the next ten minutes or so, here’s an old Joy of Six for your leisure and pleasure.
HALF TIME: Liverpool 2-2 Arsenal
That was a simply wonderful half of football. More, please! “Is this game simply an exercise in trolling Man Utd fans?” asks Andy Gordon. “Last night their draw with Newcastle was described as the best game of the season. Now it isn’t even the best televised game in the last 24 hours.”
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45 min +2: Ibe is sent into space down the right by Clyne. Mertesacker can only deflect the resulting cross with his chest to Firmino, 12 yards out and level with the right hand post. Firmino, with his back to goal, takes one touch with his right peg to control, then swivels and curls a stunning effort towards the top left. It’s got Cech beaten, but it pings off the top of the bar. So close to a first-half hat-trick.
45 min +1: Can, from the best part of 30 yards, attempts to float a curling ball into the top right. That’ll not be beating Cech.
45 min: There will be three extra minutes added to this first half.
43 min: Walcott has a dig from distance. The ball balloons off Sakho for a corner. Lallana clear’s Ozil’s corner at the near post. Liverpool try to break upfield, but Ozil falls on the ball, smothering it like a blanket. Milner tries to dig it out with his boot. He wants the free kick. It’s a drop ball. Nobody’s happy at this outcome. Milner wins the drop ball against Ozil, for what that’s worth, blootering it upfield for Arsenal to gather. An entertaining few seconds of glorious futility.
41 min: But this is a little better from Liverpool. A Lallana backheel down the right, after a long run, sets Firmino into the area. The angle’s tight, so Firmino fires low and hard towards the near post, in the hope of returning the ball to Lallana. But Cech, diving low, fingertips an interception. Can sniffs around, but Mertesacker bangs clear.
40 min: A bit of space for Ibe on the right. He thinks about shooting, but all that early confidence has gone out of Liverpool’s game. He checks, turns back to Clyne. Firmino’s fed down the right, but his cross is closed down and deflected into Cech’s arms.
38 min: Moreno wins a bouncing ball down the inside-left channel, pauses with it at his feet, then wedges it towards the penalty spot. But Henderson, making a lung-bursting run from deep on the right, is never getting there ahead of Cech, who ambles off his line to pluck the ball from the sky.
37 min: Clyne, bustling in from the right, tries to get the ball under control for a shot, but it’s not responding to his commands. He lays off to Ibe, who blooters a shot into Stanley Park.
35 min: Anfield is still noisy, but it’s the away support making most of the racket. Liverpool have been utterly incapable of stringing together two passes since conceding the second equaliser. “I half expect Steve Evans to turn out to be some kind of Johnny Vegas-style long-term-commitment character comedian,” writes Matt Dony. “It’s the only explanation. Eddie Howe could be an everyman observational comedian. What is the deal with old people and Bournemouth? Amirite?”
34 min: Campbell cuts in from the right and has another dig. The ball loops off Moreno and over the bar for a corner on the right. Cue more slapstick shenanigans. Mignolet comes out to flap. Toure guides a header onto the back of Mertesacker’s head. After a pinball trill, the ball sails out to the left of goal.
31 min: Campbell is beginning to show his qualities. He cuts in side from the right and sends a looping shot straight down Mignolet’s throat. Then he’s very nearly skittering past Moreno, but can’t quite earn the corner. Liverpool were on top during the opening stages, but it’s all Arsenal now.
28 min: How are Arsenal not leading?! Campbell slips a pass down the right to release Walcott into the Liverpool area. He fires a low cross towards Giroud, who just has to tap home with Mignolet and his entire defence all over the shop. But Giroud somehow hooks the ball back across the face of goal, and a prone Mignolet shovels the ball away to clear his lines. He’s had a shocker so far, but that’s a fine reaction stop from the keeper, brilliant stuff. Liverpool hack upfield.
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27 min: That’s Mignolet beaten twice at his near post. “Glad we upped his contract!” quips Rick McGahey.
GOAL! Liverpool 2-2 Arsenal (Giroud 25)
Ramsey and Giroud exchange a chippy one-two on the edge of the Liverpool box. Ramsey’s suddenly clear in the box! He dinks the ball over the advancing Mignolet. It’s dropping in, but Sakho heads off the line and over the bar for a corner. Much good it’s done him, though. From the set piece, hit low and hard towards the near post, Giroud gets a faint flick and Mignolet helps it into the net. What a strange game this has been! What a game!
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24 min: A fairly lax clearing header by Mertesacker allows Milner to drive into the Arsenal box on the right. Monreal is there to attach himself to Milner’s shoulder, and the Liverpool midfielder can only prod weakly towards the bottom right.
21 min: Liverpool are playing some lovely football right now. A few triangles on the edge of the area. Suddenly Firmino, down the inside left, slides the ball inside for Henderson, who slips forward for Moreno, free in the area. Moreno batters a shot off the underside of the bar, 1966 World Cup final style. The linesman gets involved here, too, but only to correctly flag Moreno for offside. But the home side are well on top, even if Ramsey’s goal means the scoreline doesn’t quite reflect the level of their superiority so far.
WHAT A GOAL! Liverpool 2-1 Arsenal (Firmino 19)
You wait ages for your first Anfield goal ... Arsenal try to play the ball out of defence. Henderson slides in to intercept, and nearly sends Milner free down the inside-left channel. Milner stops, turns, and clips the ball inside for Firmino, who curls an unstoppable shot into the top right from 25 yards. That was curing in from the moment it left his boot. A beautiful goal.
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17 min: It’s still all Liverpool, despite the equaliser. Ibe wins a corner down the right. Milner fires the set piece into the box. It hits Walcott at the near post. He then clears. The fans behind the goal scream for a penalty - this is getting old - but the players don’t bother and the referee waves play on. Incidentally, Giroud just popped off to get a staple put in his head. Who’d be a Premier League star, huh?
16 min: Wow, what a start to this game. There’s a pause before the restart as Giroud gets attention for a crack upside the head; he came off worse in a 50-50 aerial challenge with Sakho.
GOAL! Liverpool 1-1 Arsenal (Ramsey 14)
Arsenal have done nothing in attack, and now look! A bit of head tennis on the edge of the Liverpool penalty box. The ball drops to Campbell, 30 yards out, along the inside-right channel. He threads a gorgeous ball down the channel to release Ramsey into the box. He snaps a shot towards the bottom right, beating Mignolet at his near post. A cracking finish, though yet another question mark against Liverpool’s keeper.
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12 min: It’s been all Liverpool so far. Arsenal haven’t spent a second in Liverpool’s final third. “Is there any manager in the English game who would make a better stand-up than Klopp?” wonders Charles Antaki. “There is the self-satirizing Steve Evens, true, and Phil Brown I think is still somewhere around, but Klopp has the hipster plus family appeal. He doesn’t even have to be in a good mood to deliver the laffs.” Louis van Gaal? He’s got a deadpan charm, a bit like Steven Wright or Jack Dee.
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GOAL! Liverpool 1-0 Arsenal (Firmino 10)
Milner, down the inside left, feeds Can down the channel. He drops a shoulder and cuts inside, battering a low shot towards the bottom right. Cech does brilliantly to parry, but the ball breaks to Firmino, ten yards out and level with the right-hand post. Firmino fires low and hard into the bottom right. He celebrates his first league goal at Anfield by taking his shirt off, and that’s a booking.
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9 min: Liverpool have started very much the stronger. Moreno jigs around down the left and earns a corner. Milner takes, and Mertesacker clears. But only halfway up the pitch. And when Milner picks the ball up, 30 yards from goal ...
7 min: Clyne and Ibe take turns to cause bother down the inside-right channel. After a couple of dribbles each, Clyne eventually takes a shot. It’s blocked, but the ball springs loose into the right-hand side of the box. Ibe tries to get there, but Koscielny is across and too strong. Ibe goes down, shoulder to shoulder. Anfield appeals. Ibe doesn’t.
6 min: Can drives down the middle with purpose, glides a little to the left, then slips the ball back inside for Lallana, who has space on the edge of the area. Lallana should get a shot on goal at the very least, but lets the ball clank between his legs, then falls as he bumps into Mertesacker. Anfield screams for a penalty kick, but that’s never going to be given.
4 min: Ozil drops deep and playmakes for the first, but almost certainly not the last, time of the evening. He nearly releases Walcott down the inside-left channel with a sliderule pass, but his team-mate is too eager and is caught offside. Liverpool go up the other end, Milner attempting a curler into the top right from distance out on the left. Ambitious, and easy for Cech to collect. “The scarf in the picture is incorrect too,” opines Glen Sutton. “It’s bad form to use full stops in uppercase initialisms like AFC of LFC. On the plus side, they did spell Wednesday correctly.”
2 min: A fast-paced start to the game. Liverpool seeing most of the ball, but not doing a whole lot with it. Arsenal seem happy to sit back and let the home side have it. Waiting for Liverpool to blow themselves out?
And we're off!
A warm handshake between Klopp and Wenger, and Liverpool get the ball rolling. Arsenal are kicking towards the Kop in the first half, which means Liverpool will do that in the second, just the way they like it. Sakho lumps long, and the ball’s soon in Cech’s hands. It’s a noisy Anfield.
The teams are out! Liverpool are in their famous red shirts and red shorts, while Arsenal sport their second-choice golden tops with dark breeches. A light drizzle in the air. Nothing too hectic. The atmosphere more than makes up for that. A blast of Gerry and the Pacemakers, and we’ll be off in a minute!
A relaxed Arsene Wenger speaks! But only to his team in the dressing room before kick-off. No pre-match interview on BT Sport, unless I dozed off for a while there, Russian commentator style. Anything’s possible. They did show a pre-record with him in his office, smiling ruefully about his side’s 5-1 defeat here a couple of years ago. But you didn’t miss much.
Just in case you’re expecting the game to start right about now, a reminder that it’s a late 8pm kick-off at Anfield. But Liverpool’s city rivals Everton will be kicking off now - and you can follow their game at Manchester City with Tim Hill here. And it’s an MBM feast for you this evening, because Bryan Graham is all over the other 8pm kick off, Tottenham Hotspur v Leicester City, here. You lucky people, as a former Fulham chairman once said. Variety-show patter from the 1940s, the internet kids can’t get enough of it.
A smiling Jurgen Klopp speaks! “Obviously most of the time before a game I am really excited because I like football. So we have a chance to play well, good, perfect. I’m looking forward to it. We don’t play without Christian Benteke: he’s on the bench, and that’s good. But we play a different line-up. Hopefully the right one. Arsenal want to play football in different spaces, and we have an idea for this. But let’s see what happens. We have some players in our team who have scored goals in their life. Maybe in their youth.” Tinder dry, there. He’s also certainly got plenty of respect for Arsenal and Arsene Wenger. Admitting that his side have found goalscoring hard recently - just 22 in their 20 league games, Liverpool’s lowest total at this stage of the season ever, worse than the mark of 23 set in 1924 and then again in 1971 - he announced with a rare straight face: “You don’t solve your goalscoring problems playing against Arsenal.”
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It’s probably not a surprise to report that Liverpool have made 11 changes from the team that started the FA Cup third round at Exeter City last Friday. In comes... no, life’s too short. Perhaps there’s more relevance in the number of changes made from the side that won the first leg of the League Cup semi at Stoke last Tuesday. In place of Dejan Lovren, Joe Allen, Lucas and Philippe Coutinho: Mamadou Sakho, Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Jordan Ibe.
Arsenal’s FA Cup side against Sunderland was something of a freeform jazz number too. So let’s compare this Premier League starting XI to their last one, at home against Newcastle United. And there’s just the one change there: Joel Campbell comes in for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Tonight's teams
Liverpool: Mignolet, Clyne, Toure, Sakho, Moreno, Henderson, Milner, Can, Lallana, Ibe, Firmino.
Subs: Ward, Caulker, Smith, Lucas, Allen, Teixeira, Benteke.
Arsenal: Cech, Bellerin, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Monreal, Flamini, Ramsey, Campbell, Ozil, Walcott, Giroud.
Subs: Macey, Gibbs, Gabriel, Chambers, Arteta, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Iwobi.
Referee: Mike Jones (Cheshire).
Parliamo Deutsch: “I must protest at the atrocious German of these Klopp T-shirts,” writes Nathaniel Davis. “In German you never say ‘Ein’ as a noun to mean ‘One’. The ‘One’ is implied by turning the adjective into a noun. ‘The Normal One’ would just be ‘Der Normale’.” Peter Oh, similarly appalled, adds with a puntastic flourish: “Beware of the false ein!”
Good evening!
Matches between Liverpool and Arsenal have cachet, baby. They’ve got cachet up the yin-yang. The two teams contested the 1950, 1971 and 2001 FA Cup finals. They featured on the very first Match of the Day from Beatlesville back in 1964. A late-season win for Liverpool in 1947 went a long way to landing the title. The latest late-season win of all for Arsenal in 1989 comprehensively decided another. There’s some history here, and we’ve only scratched the surface.
The most recent of it favours Arsenal. Since Luis Suarez sealed a 2-0 win for Liverpool at the Emirates in August 2011, the teams have met nine times, and Arsenal have won on five occasions. Three other matches - including a genuine game-of-two-halves affair in north London earlier this season - have been draws. Liverpool have only won once, but what a win that was: a 5-1 hiding at Anfield in Feburary 2014 that derailed Arsenal’s title challenge that year while sparking off a thoroughly entertaining but ultimately futile charge of their own.
The memory of that astonishing victory will give Liverpool some hope for this particular fixture. In truth, they need to take what they can right now: their injury list is long, and in any case, with or without it, their form this season has been patchy, veering between the genuinely spectacular and the genuinely spectacularly awful. They’re a mid-table proposition at the moment. Arsenal, on the other hand, top the table, having won seven of their last eight games in all competitions. Their only defeat during that run, mind, was a doozy: a pathetic 4-0 capitulation at Southampton, who haven’t exactly been pulling up many trees themselves lately. Right now, that’s a blip. Liverpool will be hoping to turn it into some sort of signifier.
So the in-form leaders are looking for another win that’d consolidate their position at the top of the Premier League. Meanwhile their hosts are looking to drag themselves out of mid-table, and back into Champions League reckoning. With both teams far happier when they’re trying to attack, this promises to be yet another memorable occasion. If it’s half as good as last night’s six-goal thriller between Newcastle United and Manchester United, we’re in for a treat. It’s on!
Kick off: 8pm GMT.
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