16 Conclusions from Arsenal 3-1 Liverpool: Alisson-Van Dijk disasterclass has Gunners dreaming again

Arsenal put themselves right back in the title picture with an impressive performance against Liverpool that nevertheless required some unlikely assistance from the visitors to deliver the three points it thoroughly deserved.

1. There are valid questions to be asked about whether a title race six-pointer at this crucial stage of the season as the home straight comes into view should really have quite this level of inexplicable chaos. Is the Barclays actually rubbish? Shouldn’t a game between two of the three best teams in the country just be less silly than this? Where, precisely, is Liverpool’s midfield at? But that’s all boring nerd stuff really. This was great fun and also very, very funny.

Two of the very funniest goals of the entire season coming in a pivotal title clash just feels very on-brand for the Barclays and we really wouldn’t want it any other way. There will be some attempt at more detailed analysis later – because we’ve got 16 of these things to get through – but it does feel like the most important conclusion is that sometimes this sport is brilliantly funny and that these are very often the best times.

2. It’s an absolutely enormous win for Arsenal, though. They’ll probably think that’s more important than how funny it was, and you know what? Fair enough. There are so, so many reasons this was important. First and most obvious is the impact on the table. This wasn’t as some suggested a must-win game; even Mikel Arteta’s team selection pointed more to a must-not-lose mentality. But the three points cuts Liverpool’s lead at the top to two points while also keeping Man City honest below them. But perhaps of equal importance for Arsenal was how this game now alters the narrative. They dominated this game but until a couple of uncharacteristically generous moments from Virgil van Dijk and Alisson were in danger of failing to take the victory they so thoroughly deserved.

At that point, all the talk once again becomes about Arsenal’s lack of killer instinct in front of goal, about their failure to collect deserved rewards, about how this would surely derail their title chances.

If you’re an Arsenal fan, there are currently only two ways a big game can end. The first is with pundits noting how the absence of a true finisher is hurting them and the other is Richard Keys (or Jamie Carragher) getting upset with the way Mikel Arteta (or Martin Odegaard) is celebrating victory. The second option is definitely the one you want to see, for so many reasons.

3. A massive result for Arsenal, but one suspects a pretty significant one for Manchester City. Given the choice, we strongly suspect they would rather find themselves in another title tussle with Arsenal than with Jurgen Klopp on his farewell tour. While a draw would probably have been ideal for City, an Arsenal win was definitely preferable to a Liverpool one, and the nature of the match itself should also have been well received at the Etihad.

Arsenal looking brilliantly organised and effective but needing help from defensive howlers to actually get over the line, and Liverpool looking alarmingly toothless going forward and with schisms appearing from nowhere at the back. Take care of business tomorrow night against Brentford – admittedly a Brentford team who did the double over the champions last season – and for the first time in quite a while the idea of City as compelling, overwhelming favourites for the title will be based on what’s actually happening rather than on what we all expected and assumed would eventually happen because it always bloody does.

4. While it would be too much to say the team selections were cautious, it would be fair to say neither manager took the more adventurous options available to him for this pivotal game. Arteta opted for Kai Havertz as the very falsest of nines with Eddie Nketiah on the bench and Gabriel Jesus once again unavailable, while Jurgen Klopp for the first time this season named a Premier League starting XI containing neither Mo Salah nor Darwin Nunez.

5. For the first 47-and-a-half minutes of the first half, it was Arsenal’s selection that was paying off. Arsenal were a constant threat whether building patiently or countering rapidly – mainly through Gabriel Martinelli on the left. Havertz and Odegaard – who bothered Liverpool centre-backs both current and retired with his efforts – often took up seemingly counter-intuitive positions in the channels, but ones that often left Liverpool’s central defenders with nobody to really mark and left them confused about what to do. This was never more evident than with the opening goal, which arrived in the 14th minute but was by then already deserved to the point of overdue.

With Havertz starting from an unorthodox position for a nine, Liverpool’s four defenders all seemed to be working to a different gameplan. Absolutely none of those gameplans appeared to involve being within shouting distance of the German. It was no great surprise when Havertz failed to take the opportunity himself, denied by a smart save from Alisson in what would prove something of a high point in his afternoon, but Bukayo Saka was on hand – again, Liverpool’s confusion evident by the way he was entirely on his own but also being played onside by a confused Ibrahima Konate on the other side of the pitch – to control adroitly and sweep the ball home. Havertz was never going to score, Saka was never going to miss. While Arsenal’s subsequent goals would owe more to inexplicable and humorous chaos, this one was a chaos of their own making. A controlled chaos, and one which should really have yielded further rewards as the half progressed.

6. Even before the goal, Arsenal had served warning. Martinelli streaked clear of Konate, filling in momentarily at right-back for a typically wandering Trent Alexander-Arnold and placed a cross onto Saka’s head from which he really should have scored. Joe Gomez arguably did just enough to put him off, but that would be a pretty charitable reading of the situation. It nevertheless set the tone for a first half in which Liverpool’s defence never looked comfortable against Arsenal’s trickery, but equally one in which Arsenal never looked capable of taking full advantage. It’s been repeated to the point of absolute cliché, but it remains impossible to watch this Arsenal team at work and not imagine what it might look like with a figurehead striker on a level to match the rest of it.

7. Arsenal’s control of almost the entirety of this match was truly striking for a game of this level between two rivals chasing the same dream. We’ve already made clear we very much enjoyed the more slapstick and thus more Barclays elements of it all, and the post-match celebrations, and the amount of p*ss being boiled by those celebrations, but if there was a serious takeaway from this match that shouldn’t be lost to all that it would be just how impressively Arsenal controlled so much of the game.

The goals may have owed much to chaos and nonsense but Arsenal’s dominance was built on the entirely non-chaotic and nonsense-free performances of Jorginho and Declan Rice in a midfield battle won decisively by the home side. Here was where the solid foundations for nonsense were built, with Curtis Jones and especially Ryan Gravenberch found wanting for the visitors.

8. Yet a Liverpool side that would have been thrilled to emerge from their first-half chasing only a goal behind somehow got in level. Luis Diaz deserves a degree of credit for persistence and perseverance, but this was a bad goal from Arsenal’s point of view in so many ways. David Raya could have done more to make life difficult. William Saliba absolutely should have just dealt with it instead of attempting to be cute; had he smashed it into the stands there would hardly have been time for Liverpool to restart the game with a throw-in. The risk-reward calculation in attempting to shepherd a near stationary ball back to his own keeper six yards from goal in the third minute of three added minutes was wildly against him. And then Gabriel, desperate to avoid handball at all managed instead to produce a handball of the precise nature required to divert the ball into the net. The goal came just as the commentators were pointing out that Liverpool were about to go an entire first half without a shot on target for only the second time this season. Having drawn level at 1-1, they still went an entire first half without a shot on target for only the second time this season. Given the context, and the nature of everything that had preceded it, this was a live contender for the funniest goal of the entire season. For about half an hour.

9. What we absolutely must do at this point is note that, cartoonishly and abysmally bad as this goal was from an Arsenal viewpoint, it was an aberration in every way. Easy to look at this 10-second disasterclass and declare it Peak Arsenal because it tallies with so much of what we think we know about them. But it doesn’t really fit the rest of this performance, or indeed the only other comparable fixture. Arsenal have now welcomed Manchester City and Liverpool to the Emirates to the season and sent both packing. City were restricted to barely a chance in the Gunners’ 1-0 win with Erling Haaland somehow contributing less to that game than he has to some of the ones he’s missed through injury, while Liverpool created perhaps less still here. The absence of Mo Salah is some mitigation for the visitors, but the organisation and control Arsenal have shown in these pivotal wins against their biggest title rivals this season is something we wouldn’t necessarily have seen from them last season. That Arsenal have clearly stepped up a level in these biggest games while failing to so consistently take care of business against the rest is a frustrating puzzle for Arteta to solve.

10. The sheer absurdity of the Liverpool equaliser, both the inherent calamity of its nature and how wildly undeserved it was, inevitably shook the game out of its accepted pattern at the start of the second half. Liverpool had as many shots in the first five minutes of the second half as they managed in the entirety of the first. For a brief while there it really did appear like both these teams’ seasons might hinge on that ludicrous Liverpool equaliser. We all know how good Liverpool are at salvaging a losing cause this season and they don’t generally need that kind of quite literal helping hand to do it. They’ve got plenty of results out of plenty of performances that really haven’t been all that convincing and this game was showing significant signs of being another.

Even when Arsenal had recovered the run of themselves it was still becoming hard to see just how they were going to find another way through a Liverpool defence that now appeared to have worked out what it was supposed doing after its repeated first-half abdabs.

Liverpool 5th in xG Premier League table as underlying numbers suggest they are over-performing.

11. And then… it happened. The new funniest goal of the season London bussing its way into our lives so soon after the previous clubhouse leader. We’ve watched it over and over and over again and we still can’t work out what either Alisson or Virgil van Dijk are actually trying to achieve. There’s a sort of chicken-and-egg element to it where they both appear to start f***ing it up at the precise moment they realise with confused horror that the other is doing so, this being a situation that neither man is used to encountering both from themselves and their colleague. There’s a kind of balletic grace to the way Alisson just ends up doing… absolutely nothing at all as Martinelli accepts the unlikeliest but potentially most important of gifts.

Arsenal fans did and must enjoy this ridiculousness. It is so rare for the universe to hand something straight back like this after the nature of their own calamity at that end of the Emirates such a brief time earlier. The universe generally in these situations prefers repeatedly and unrelentingly kicking you in the nuts.

12. By the time of Arsenal’s third points-clinching goal for Leandro Trossard, chaos was in full reign. Liverpool had Luis Diaz at right-back, Ibrahima Konate had been sent off and Van Dijk had apparently accepted this was not to be his day. His half-hearted tracking of Trossard meant he could do no more than get a situation-complicating toe-poke of a deflection on the Belgian’s shot. But even then Alisson’s attempt to sort of sweep the ball away never really seemed to present best practice. Arsenal deserved their win and were not remotely flattered by a third goal, but the nature of the goals that won them the game are unlikely to be repeated.

13. It goes without saying that Liverpool miss Mo Salah, but this game provided confirmation of how much they also miss Darwin Nunez when he’s not around. He may be the smoothest-brained footballer of all time, but you have to sometimes ignore his own personal chaos and reflect on how it helps bring others into the game and creates opportunity for more normal players to exploit. Arsenal were expertly drilled and, with one glaring moment of exception, executed their gameplan faultlessly but it’s hard to imagine it would all have seemed quite so straightforward when faced with the sheer unpredictability that Darwin brings to the table.

Although this was admittedly a tough game to ultimately make this point because when he did come on he decided today was a day to be more Darwin Nunez than anyone had ever been before, culminating in a panicked slice wide when at least three team-mates were better placed.

Gary Neville, narrowly avoiding the temptation to swear at the Uruguayan, eventually settled on “He does well initially” which it occurs to us is about as perfect a four-word summary of Darwin as it’s possible to compose.

14. Konate’s red card was at least a straightforward one, although we did enjoy Neville pontificating on the way he might have been able to get away with what was by any measure a deeply cynical and intentional foul when already on a booking. Raising his hands certainly sealed the deal, but there was no foul he could realistically have made there that might have seen him spared.

It was certainly the least problematic red card Liverpool have received in North London this season, and preserves an ‘unbeaten with 11 men’ record which is surely the real quiz. Still unbeaten outside North London as well, come to think of it. Fewer complaints with this result, one imagines, although the Alisson-Van Dijk effort was at least a little bit good process.

15. Because it’s Arsenal and because it’s a big game, the Celebration Police are already out in force. There are, we feel, elements to this. While at the most fundamental level we remain firmly in the ‘celebrate however you like within accepted limits of decency and relevant laws of the land’ camp, there is, if you squint hard enough, just about half a case that can be made for the extent of Arsenal’s celebrations – and to be clear, here we are talking only about players and staff rather than fans who absolutely always should go loony – representing an excess of emotion. We can just about accept that expending this amount of emotional energy on a game that probably still leaves you in third when the stagger unwinds might in theory not be great. We still think it’s a bit of a misery-guts theory, but we can see it.

But the most important thing is this: that’s not the argument the loudest sergeants in the celebration police will be making. They just don’t like fun, don’t like seeing people be happy, may well be salty about this result and in at least one specific and high-profile example just really don’t like Mikel Arteta. It’s a bad argument in bad faith and Arsenal fans shouldn’t rise to it. Celebrate however you want, and ignore those telling you any different.

16. Peter Drury, though. We’re not about to let that slide. It’s becoming clear that Peter Drury on a weekly basis is just too much Peter Drury, isn’t it? Even the people who like him must surely concede the point now. Among his highlights and inexplicable flourishes here: single-handedly ruining Liverpool’s objectively funny equaliser by calling it “a maelstrom of awfulness”, greeting Thiago’s introduction from the bench with “Back so soon? That said, he’s been away a while” and describing the game as “reach-out-and-touch-it tense”. Saved the best for last, though, by pointing out that Liverpool “will not vanish from this race” after their second whole defeat of the season left them languishing two points clear at the top.