Liverpool’s replay aversion prompts successful gamble as Arsenal’s woes deepen with FA Cup defeat

There’s been lots of talk this week about FA Cup replays. They are on the one hand an often vital lifeline for struggling clubs. They’ve built new stands and even saved clubs from liquidation.

But on the other hand, they’re a right pain in the arse for mid-table Premier League teams panicking that the extra game or two their failure to win at the first time of asking gives them might see them plummet from 12th in the table to 14th. You can see the dilemma.

One indisputably great thing about FA Cup replays, though, is that for very obvious reasons there are plenty of times when teams really don’t want them. Liverpool right now are one such team. They’re competing on four fronts, have a Carabao semi-final this week, have had to completely rebuild their midfield, cope with injuries and their best player has just departed for AFCON. Another game against Arsenal, even at Anfield, was very much not what was required.

Which all helped make the last 15 minutes of this FA Cup blockbuster riotously entertaining and ultimately successful for Jurgen Klopp and his side.

We often idly wonder just how far a team might push the ‘don’t want a replay’ policy, because when it comes down to it teams will always fight for that replay rather than just start whacking in 90th-minute own goals. Mind you, on the basis of the first 75 minutes of this game, it’s very possible had either team attempted that tactic they’d have managed to miss.

Liverpool were fantastically fortunate still to be in the game at half-time as Arsenal pressed and harried a makeshift Liverpool defence into oblivion only to shamble around pitifully when it came to actually trying to score a goal, almost as if this is a team that has almost everything a team could want apart from a reliable and consistent goalscorer.

Liverpool, having thus ridden their luck through a first half that could nevertheless have ended with them taking a late lead through a Trent Alexander-Arnold effort from which the Emirates crossbar is still rattling, grew into the game in the second half and started to press and harry Arsenal’s defence into oblivion only to shamble around pitifully when it came to actually trying to score a goal, almost as if this is a team without Mo Salah but with Darwin Nunez.

The opening goal was, in hindsight, inevitably scored a) for Liverpool and b) by an Arsenal player. There was no other way. As ever with an own goal, it’s easy to criticise. Could Jakub Kiwior have done better? Could Aaron Ramsdale have got involved? In reality, this was an own goal to chalk up to the quality of the delivery. On a day when both teams generally fell apart in the final third, Alexander-Arnold produced the moment of outstanding quality to create the error with a devilish delivery from a free-kick that both demanded and punished the defender’s attention.

At this point of course, the narrative shifts. Liverpool’s first-half performance which was at the time widely perceived to be some combination of panicked, ropey, poor and fortunate could now be rebadged as a gutsy, determined endeavour to keep themselves in the game. Certainly they were far more deserving of the rewards they got in the second half, and they made the game safe when Luis Diaz finally, after 94 minutes, produced the one good finish of the day as Arsenal poured forward in desperate but never convincing pursuit of the equaliser they logically didn’t really want.

In the context of everything, a perfect result (if not performance) for Klopp and Liverpool but a painful extension of Arsenal’s current struggles. Going out of the FA Cup is bad enough, but it was a bad draw and someone had to lose this tie. Going out in a manner that highlighted and exaggerated the team’s most glaring flaw makes it far harder to take.

Arsenal have a two-week break now that is either the very best or very worst thing that could happen to Mikel Arteta’s side. We’re really not sure which.

On one hand, this has for a few weeks now looked like a team ready for nap time. They’re overtired and cranky and making poor decisions while doing things far more slowly than they would do normally. Nice little rest might sort them out.

On the other hand, handled wrongly, it’s two weeks for that grumpiness to fester and turn into something worse.

What’s beyond doubt is that something needs to change for Arsenal and two weeks off is at least the opportunity for a reset.

It’s now one win in seven across all competitions for Arsenal and while fourth place in the league and a handy-looking last-16 draw in the Champions League hardly positions them as a club in crisis there are worrying signs.

The lack of a reliable goalscorer means it’s hard now to have much sympathy for dominating games and failing to take their chances. They’ve lost their last three games and managed one (scuffed) Bukayo Saka goal against Fulham from 61 attempts.

Kai Havertz was deployed in the central role here, and it’s fair to say the experiment was not a resounding success. Multiple chances were squandered, and tellingly the reason was all too often all too obvious: a lack of conviction. He was ponderous in the Liverpool penalty box against a defence having to cope with the colossal absence of Virgil van Dijk and offering plenty of opportunities in a one-sided first half.

Reiss Nelson should have done better with an early chance magnificently created by Ramsdale’s long pass, a contribution that would see the recalled keeper end the first half with more key passes than saves. Nelson’s decision-making let him down, opting to try and take the ball round Alisson rather than lift it over the advancing keeper as the ball bounced invitingly.

Martin Odegaard hammered a shot against the crossbar in the midst of an Arsenal attack that must have had an xG of around two by itself.

Playing well apart from scoring is fine in a one-off game; when it keeps happening to a supposedly elite title-chasing side it becomes something more. Because scoring goals is actually quite important.

And their struggles today came against a left-back who’s a centre-back, a right-back who wants to be a midfielder, a youngster and the admittedly immense Ibrahima Konate. This was not a peak Liverpool back four repelling Arsenal’s attacks; this was Arsenal tripping over their own feet again and again.

It’s becoming a bit of a habit. They’ve got two weeks to break it.