A Season-Defining Clash for Arteta’s Title Pursuit as Arsenal vs Liverpool
The thing about going 20 years without a PL title and falling agonisingly short twice in a row in the two seasons before is that you go into the new season thinking every dropped point, every semi-convincing performance, even every self-/referee-sabotaged performance, is the end. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first game of the season, the thirtieth, or the ninth. You have to win every game, and you have to win them convincingly.
It doesn’t matter, too, if Europe’s highest open play chance creator and club captain has been out for the most part, or as many as seven potential starters + a sizable raft of key squad players can’t put a run of games together within an 8-week old season.
Every Arsenal fan will so quickly point the hyper-over-reactivity to an Arsenal thing, a predisposition as old as the 21st century itself, but it doesn’t help when the nemesis of it all is none other than the greatest manager in the world, his sea of blue sharks, and their collective band of 115 charges. The cynics and detractors will call it an easy excuse, apart from Jurgen Klopp, maybe, but the logic of an 8-week old season is that you’re better off focusing on yourself anyway rather than caring too much about your biggest threat to glory.
But let’s be honest, it’s hard to keep the logic when you see John Stones score a late winner to prevent your club from a first win at the Etihad in 8 years and then go on to score another winner a day after your first loss of the season. You’re excused to be a fan on some days, I’ll tell you that.
The ‘truth’ of Arsenal’s season, however—even if you are a proponent of Arsenal and their fans looking within—is not as explainable as you’d think, and that often means a lot of ammunition for both the pessimists, as it is equally for the optimists. Even so, what both sides of the aisle can agree on is that Sunday’s game is a big one—despite being as early as October—and whatever the context of the season is, it will not matter. It is against the club that once bore the ignominy of being City’s main challenger, the club whose fans scorn at the idea of Arsenal’s new found place in the hierarchy of things and are actively yearning to fight back, for that matter.
Slot’s Reds have had their best start to a season in over a hundred years. They’ve instantly laid the blueprint of what the vision of a post-Klopp Liverpool era would have always looked like—less chaos, less intensity, more control. The ‘truth’ of Liverpool’s own season hasn’t been so much as convoluted as it has been for their opponents on Sunday. It has been centered on a true but maybe slightly reductive fact: “They have not played any real big games,” depending on where you see Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea and how Liverpool approached that game. Well, on Sunday, they come up against Arteta’s Arsenal, a massive game in many respects, even if a good number of Arsenal fans aren’t so seemingly bullish about their chances.
The gunners will go into the game sweating over the fitnesses of Jurrien Timber—the guy who equalled Trent’s record for most chances created by a defender in the PL only a few weeks ago—Bukayo Saka—the guy who’s somewhere at the top of the big chances created chart in Europe—and Ricardo Calafiori—the guy who’s breathed life into Arsenal’s left side attacking dynamics. Add that to Odegaard, Tomiyasu, and William Saliba—the guy who’s unarguably one of the best defenders in the world, hence simply irreplaceable for Arsenal—and it’s not looking great.
Arteta knows it’ll be hard, but he’s not making excuses beforehand; he’s never done so, aside from a few bust ups with the PGMOL over the years, if you count those. The season itself has been hard in many other respects other than the injuries. There’s been 3 red cards in 8 PL games, games that have included battles against Aston Villa, Manchester City, and Spurs, all away from the Emirates, for that matter. You can look at it and realize Arteta’s team were that John Stones winner away from going 9 out of 9 in those games. A viewpoint that also screams “4 points from the top after a tough fixture list is not bad.” But perhaps the Bournemouth away performance even after a raft of changes plus a red card in the first half is enough to send a group of fans like Arsenal’s into panic mode, especially when the very next game sees their club hold on to a one-nil lead against the mighty Shakhtar Donetsk towards the end, and most especially when the next fixture after that is against top of the table Liverpool.
Arsenal’s 11v11 xG for and against has them as the best team in the league; however, they’ve already gone over 160 minutes with a man down this season, 100 more minutes than the next team. That’s also 18 red cards (most) overall since Arteta took the job in 2019. They were up by a goal vs. City and Brighton, and drawing vs. Bournemouth before the card came out, they went on to draw the first two and lose the last one. But you see, the thing about going 20 years without a PL title where you fall agonizingly short, twice in a row in the two most recent seasons before this is that you have to pick up points, no matter the circumstances, especially if those red cards are proving ever so unpreventable, for one reason or the other.
The validity of those red cards is still being debated, and for logical reasons too, mostly due to the sheer level of subjectivity around them. But whatever happens vs. Liverpool on Sunday, Arsenal know seeing themselves top of an 11v11 xG chart will mean nothing if they’re not 1 point off Liverpool by the end of the game. It is fair to think, however, that these red cards will be far from a regular occurrence as the season progresses, but it is Arsenal’s reaction to going down a man that has raised a few eyebrows. For Arteta, perhaps the most prudent thing to do is to shut up shop and rely on one of Europe’s best defenses, but for many others, including Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville, you’ve got to be braver, even away at the Etihad, and more so at the Vitality. Whether there’s logic in that give it’s as early as October is perhaps another debate entirely.
“Believe me on Sunday, we will be flying.”
– Mikel Arteta in his press conference.
Arteta says his team will be flying on Sunday, but at this point, you have to wonder if he’s thought about flying with a man down if/when it comes to it. In any case, he knows their opponents will prepare vigorously to fly on their own at the Emirates. Everyone at Liverpool sees the Arsenal game as their biggest test yet, it is a fixture they’ve not won in the PL for two years, one that they use to make light work off in the seasons preceding Klopp’s final two years at the Liverpool helm. It is a results-shift that has reinforced and underlined Arsenal’s right to belong in title conversations again. It is also again, in some ways, a battle for who has desirably undesirable honor to stand best against City and Pep. This is easily one of the Premier League’s most divine fixtures, but the headlines will be anything but divine for the home team if they don’t pick up a good result.
Perhaps, equally as a good result, it must be a hell of a performance, one similar to last year’s in February, when a loss could have seen Arsenal fall off Liverpool by a distance after a not so great start to the season. Arsenal will have to look to Gabriel Martinelli in attack, a player who’s looking more recently remotely close to the promise that saw Klopp call him ‘a talent of the century,’ and a player who likes playing against Liverpool for that matter. They may have to look, too, to Gabriel, who, despite being a top defender in his own right, has also been key to Arsenal’s attacking dynamics as much as the attackers have this season, and who will also be missing the influential William Saliba by his side. The onus will also fall on the rejuvenated Thomas Partey in midfield, as it will on Declan Rice, whose start of the season hasn’t mirrored the highs of the previous season, due to a variety of reasons.
Whether or not Liverpool themselves are better this year than last still remains to be seen—even for their fans, who are still getting used to the change in pressing schemes, amongst other tactical tweaks at Anfield—that same question will be asked of Arsenal, in spite of the possible absentees and the context of how their games have gone. But whatever happens, it is another big test for Arsenal early on in the season; for Mikel Arteta too, they have to pass it, both to send a message of calm across the Arsenal fanbase and to send, also, a message of defiance to the rest of the league that they’re still the most ready to take City’s crown, not Liverpool. Doing it without a red card will be nice.
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