To be perfectly honest, I would not be surprised in the least if Brendan Rodgers comes to the Emirates Stadium to face Arsenal on Monday night with the opinion that a point would be a brilliant prize for Liverpool to take home with them.
After all, apart from that crazy early Saturday a couple of years ago, the Northern Irishmen has had very little to cheer about after his clashes with Arsene Wenger and the Gunners. And Liverpool have been pretty far from impressive so far this season, despite them having six points on the board after their first two Premier League games.
Everyone already thought that they would come to north London and try to park a big red bus, even before Rodgers suggested the same in his pre-match press conference, as reported by The Mirror. He spoke a lot about possession of the ball and how you do not necessarily need to dominate it to win and the message was clear; defend and counter attack.
The Liverpool boss said, “It is a game against a rival you are going to be competing with at the top end of the table.
“Arsenal, like many teams, are still trying to find rhythm and flow but while doing that you want to win.
“West Ham got a good result there but with [Alexis] Sánchez back he is a real catalyst for them and they played well at Crystal Palace.. It is a challenge we are looking forward to.
“If you assess games against Arsenal we have always had dominance of the ball, especially at home. If you assess the last 10 games Arsenal have lost at home, it was about dangerous possession for the teams who won.
“They only averaged four shots on target with 43% possession. That tells you you don’t need to dominate the ball but you can dominate the space.
“That is important in the away games. Tactically we’ll arrive in a good mind about how we can win it. There are certain games you look at the approach to get you the result and that is something we have been working on this week.”
It sounds almost as if Rodgers is preparing the Liverpool fans for a tough 90 minutes, but as much as he may be annoying, he is not daft and he did spend time under Jose Mourinho. So could Rodgers be trying a bit of mind games here in an attempt to get Arsenal ready to face an obdurate side so they can take us by surprise early and get a lead to protect?