{"id":1132,"date":"2017-12-22T23:07:44","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T23:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2017-12-22T23:07:44","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T23:07:44","slug":"arsenal-3-liverpool-3-match-review-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/arsenal-3-liverpool-3-match-review-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal 3 &#8211; Liverpool 3: Match Review &#038; Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite what some people seem keen to suggest, Liverpool aren\u2019t having a poor season. I\u2019ve talked before about how Manchester City\u2019s points haul is giving the impression that we\u2019re well off the pace, yet in reality we\u2019re certainly within touching distance of the other top four teams. If one referee doesn\u2019t give the penalty for Dominic Calvert-Lewin\u2019s clever dive in the Merseyside derby and another doesn\u2019t invent a handball from Dominic Solanke against West Brom, we\u2019re already five points clear of Arsenal heading into this game, level on points with Chelsea and just three off Manchester United. Of course football isn\u2019t run on \u2018ifs\u2019 and \u2018buts\u2019, so we are were we are. Doubtless fans of those clubs would also be quick to point out refereeing decisions that haven\u2019t gone their way, too; though if they\u2019re Manchester United fans then it would be a little bit rich to take seriously.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">We&#8217;ve been really unlucky with some refereeing decisions going against us recently. Game changing ones no doubt, I agree with Hughes.<br \/>\nBut they aren&#8217;t anywhere near the main reason we&#8217;re doing so poorly.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jon Owen (@Jon19861) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jon19861\/status\/943814126563921921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 21, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Heading into this game we had a chance to put some genuine distance between us and the Gunners ahead of a busy couple of weeks. We were a point ahead of them and could have gone four points clear, meaning that it would have been extremely difficult for them to overhaul us for one of the top four spots heading into the last part of the season. It wasn\u2019t a \u2018must-win\u2019 by any stretch of the imagination, but the Reds will have gone into this game brimming with confidence and feeling as though they had a real chance to pull clear of a rival. So what do you say about a game that you are in control of and should have scored four or five goals, only to end it being lucky to get back into it for a draw? The temptation is to lose your temper and throw the baby out with the bathwater, but it\u2019s my job to be a bit more measured and try to look at the positives as well as the negatives in any given performance. Hard not to start with the negatives, though\u2026<\/p>\n<h2>We\u2019ll Never Win The Premier League With Simon Mignolet<\/h2>\n<p>I genuinely cannot believe that J\u00fcrgen Klopp thinks that Simon Mignolet is a good enough goalkeeper for Liverpool in the long-term. Whatever I think, though, the manager gave the Belgian a new contract and continues to play him in the league. Having said that, of course, he also plays Loris Karius in the Champions League games, so he obviously doesn\u2019t trust him completely. Tonight showed exactly why the German needs to make a decision about his goalkeeper in the same sort of ruthless manner that Pep Guardiola has done at Manchester City. The Spaniard has got rid of both Joe Hart and Claudio Bravo because he realised that they weren\u2019t good enough to push his team on to being one of the best in the country. Why hasn\u2019t Klopp done the same?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Mignolet was actually trying to save Xhaka&#8217;s goal with one hand (also the wrong hand) &#x1f62d;&#x1f62d;<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Enel. (@morristar_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/morristar_\/status\/944325494295683072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>When Manchester United turned up at The Emirates they allowed Arsenal thirty-three shots on goal. Of those, sixteen were on target. Yet the Red Devils won 3-1. Why? Because of the performance of David de Gea. He made the joint-most saves that a goalkeeper has made in the Premier League era to deny Arsene Wenger\u2019s team any points whatsoever. Now I\u2019m not suggesting that I want Simon Mignolet to be as good as de Gea, given that the Spaniard is one of the best goalkeepers in the world. Even so, I would like him to use both of his hands to save a shot that comes in at head height, especially if it\u2019s got a bit of movement on it. Granit Xhaka\u2019s goal was not a worldie, the Belgian just made it look like one. I don\u2019t know if Karius will turn out to be better than him, but don\u2019t know his ceiling. We know Mignolet\u2019s ceiling and it isn\u2019t anywhere near good enough for us to win trophies, so it\u2019s time for him to be put out to pasture.<\/p>\n<h2>The Attack Are As Much To Blame For Dropped Points As The Defence<\/h2>\n<p>There\u2019s a line in football that you shouldn\u2019t score three goals away from home and end up dropping points. I understand it. It makes sense to say that if the attack scores three times then the defence should be able to do enough to see the game out. Yet Liverpool had fourteen shots and countless other opportunities when a shot didn\u2019t materialise because of sloppiness from our players in the final third. Sadio Man\u00e9 was our player of the year last time out, but he\u2019s not been at the races during this campaign. Only he will know why he decided to have a shot on his weaker foot against Everton rather than square it for a tap-in during the Merseyside derby, for example. Nor will I be able to explain why he\u2019s decided to go for the spectacular tonight rather than do any number of alternatives, including controlling it and passing it or heading it into a virtually empty net.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">A draw was a surprising result after that first half, Liverpool being so wasteful before the break the only reason it wasn&#8217;t a defeat. Not sure poor defending is a great idea but it makes an entertaining match for the neutrals.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jason Wilson (@WhizzoUK) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WhizzoUK\/status\/944323244932435968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Mohamed Salah is the player of the year this season and it\u2019s difficult to criticise him when he\u2019s scored twenty-one goals in all competitions after tonight. Yet he had enough chances to win the game on his own, let alone needing any of the other players to get involved. He was wasteful again tonight and it\u2019s not unreasonable to ask him to have scored more than one of the other chances he was presented with. Tonight was another game in which the Fab Four delivered the goals but were also quite disappointing when presented with a number of really big opportunities. Philippe Coutinho had another poor game, if you take the goal out of it. I accept that it\u2019s odd to say \u2018if you take the goal out of it\u2019, but the Brazilian should have been pulling the strings and wasn\u2019t. The frustrating thing is that the chances we had weren\u2019t poor ones, they weren\u2019t us being lucky to get into space. They were really big chances that a clinical team takes. Arsenal were clinical, we were not.<\/p>\n<h2>The Defence Is Still Much Improved<\/h2>\n<p>I know the temptation after a game like tonight is to declare that Liverpool\u2019s defence is abysmal and everyone should be sacked. The desire from some supporters will be to declare that everyone is terrible and we need to replace the entire backline. Yet in three halves of football against Arsenal so far this season, we limited them to zero shots on target. Think about that for a second: an \u2018awful\u2019 defence containing the \u2018abysmal\u2019 Dejan Lovren and \u2018dreadful\u2019 Ragnar Klavan stopped Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil and Alexander Lacazette from having a shot on target over one hundred and forty-three minutes. The problem is that when we got to minute one hundred and forty-fourth minute there was no one there to dig the defence out of trouble.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">3 halves of football against this Liverpool defence so far this season. 0 shots on target. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/toptopquality?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#toptopquality<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ARSLIV?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ARSLIV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ed Herman (@shenque) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/shenque\/status\/944307664095469569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wrote an entire piece on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/lets-talk-about-liverpools-defence\/\">the Liverpool defence earlier this week<\/a>, so I\u2019m not going to go over the same ground here. What I will say, though, is that one swallow doesn\u2019t make a summer. This is only the eighth time in twenty-five games that we\u2019ve conceded more than one goal. That\u2019s the same number of times that tonight\u2019s opponents have conceded more than two goals and only two more games than Spurs, who the press rave about from a defensive point of view. J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s system is actually very, very good and limits opposition teams to few shots on targets. The problem isn\u2019t the way we set up, it\u2019s the limitations of individual players. I\u2019m not going to lay into Mignolet again, despite how much I\u2019d like to, but I do think Joe Gomez showed his naivety when he failed to simply head the ball away for Alexis Sanchez\u2019s goal. He\u2019s young, though, and a really good prospect. A couple of signings, including between the sticks, and we\u2019ll be fine moving forward.<\/p>\n<h2>There Was A Lack Of Pace In The Middle<\/h2>\n<p>Perhaps tonight will make some of Jordan Henderson\u2019s critics sit up and notice exactly what it is that he brings to the side. I doubt it, of course, given that they\u2019ll actually have been celebrating the captain going off injured. But the reality is that we lost his pace and dynamism when he was substituted and didn\u2019t replace it. I actually thought James Milner played quite well, but he was still caught out a couple of times because he\u2019s just too slow to cope in a game moving at that sort of speed. Likewise Emre Can was up to his old tricks of taking four touches when one would have done, meaning that even slow players like Jack Wilshere and Granit Xhaka could get back into the game and control the middle of the park. We were far too slow at times when a quick transition would have put Arsenal on the back foot and maybe killed them off.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">So, i can conclude Jordan Henderson(by far) the best DM at liverpool football club<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 J-Hendo (@homelesshendo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/homelesshendo\/status\/944328121821663237?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Given that we lacked any kind of pace or dynamism in the midfield, why didn\u2019t we make any effort to slow the game down at any point? We were just as guilty as Arsenal of making it a game of basketball when taking some of the pace out of the match, especially as 2-0 up, would have been the right thing to do. I\u2019m also not sure why Klopp didn\u2019t trust Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain enough to replace Henderson with him early on, especially given the former Arsenal man\u2019s excellent performance against Bournemouth last weekend. Even if the manager wanted the experience of Milner, which would have been understandable, it was clear that Man\u00e9 was struggling much earlier than the manager took him off.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_925\" style=\"width: 543px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-925\" class=\"size-large wp-image-925\" src=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_3108-533x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"533\" height=\"400\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-925\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Coutinho &amp; Klopp On The Side Of The Kop<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Likewise it was obvious that Coutinho was out of energy much earlier than he was removed from the line-up. Should the German not have given the player he spent more than thirty million on a chance to prove his worth against his former club? You\u2019d take a draw before the game, but from 2-0 up that\u2019s another draw that feels more like a loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite what some people seem keen to suggest, Liverpool aren\u2019t having a poor season. I\u2019ve talked before about how Manchester City\u2019s points haul is giving the impression that we\u2019re well off the pace, yet in reality we\u2019re certainly within touching distance of the other top four teams. If one referee doesn\u2019t give the penalty for Dominic Calvert-Lewin\u2019s clever dive in the Merseyside derby and another doesn\u2019t invent a handball from Dominic Solanke against West Brom, we\u2019re already five points clear of Arsenal heading into this game, level on points with Chelsea and just three off Manchester United. Of course football [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1133,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/1133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}