It was a crazy night at the Emirates with both Arsenal and Liverpool giving a very clear lesson in ‘how not to defend’ in a Premier League game. Arsene Wenger sent out an attacking 4-3-3 formation side and he obviously wasn’t very interested in defending and left the ageing Monreal and Koscielny to deal with the amazingly fast Liverpool attackers. This was not such a good idea, especially in the first half when we could easily have been 3-0 down if it hadn’t been for both Sane and Salah missing easyish chances.
This is how Arsene Wenger described it: ““I would say it was a nightmare [for us] in the first half,” he said after the game, “but I was very proud of the players in the second half.
“We showed quality, character, gave everything and overall, I must say, what can you say? Mentally we were not at the level in the first half, you could see incidents of the Manchester United game here where we had the bad start.
“Overall we played too deep, too far from each other, but we were much more compact in the second half and after that we are even frustrated in the end because we were 3-2 up and could have won the game.”
Wenger may feel frustrated but that was only because Klopp’s side were just as bad defensively as we were and they somehow managed to let us score three goals in the space of six minutes to gain an unlikely lead, before getting back an equalizer before the end.
It was brilliantly exciting for the fans and it could have ended 5-5 with the amount of errors at the back that could have ended up in the net. Petr Cech was excellent and took charge of all the set pieces practically on his own, but there was very little he could do about the goals, which were unstoppable.
If Wenger and Klopp had agreed to put on a night of entertainment, then they could not have planned it better, but with suicidal defending like that there is little chance of either of their teams getting anywhere near the Premier League trophy. We will just have to be happy with the entertainment I guess…
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