Liverpool travelled to the Emirates knowing that nothing but a win would be enough to realistically keep their top four hopes alive. Far from inspiring them to play at full potential, however, the reds looked overwhelmed by the situation and were ultimately overwhelmed by their opponents; a capitulation towards the end of the first half put the game to bed within forty five minutes, and the game eventually ended 4-1 Arsenal.
We started off playing very badly indeed. Arsenal employed the tactic that we used to such great effect for much of last season – they pressed high and forced errors. Kolo Toure was all too happy to oblige on the errors front: he gifted the opposition the ball on multiple occasions, and only a couple of first class saves from Mignolet kept us in it. It could genuinely have been 3-0 after ten minutes, but somehow or other the game remained level.
Having weathered the initial storm, we began to play quite well. Our passing became much more fluid (admittedly it would have been hard for it to get worse), off-the-ball movement was good and chances were being created. The best of these chances fell to Markovic: Coutinho once again demonstrated his immense talent by feeding the ball perfectly into the Serb’s path, but Markovic messed up his simple pass across goal that would have left Sterling with a tap-in. He came in for a barrage of criticism in the wake of the incident, but much of it was unwarranted – that aside I thought he had a pretty decent half compared to everyone else, and he didn’t really deserve to be subbed off at half time.
source: liverpoolfc.com
That said, something had to change at half time, because when we reached the break we somehow found ourselves three goals down. Put simply, we capitulated. A frenzied spell of scoring took place towards the end of the half – Bellerin started it off after ghosting all too easily around Moreno and guiding it into the far corner, Ozil added a second from a free kick and Sanchez completed the crazy eight minutes on the stroke of half time with a vicious drive into the roof of the net. Everyone knew that Skrtel’s absence would be felt against a good team like Arsenal, but seeing the defence disintegrate was disheartening indeed.
Liverpool still looked a little shell-shocked on coming out for the second half, and to be honest can probably be grateful that Arsenal didn’t look to press their advantage. They sat back, and did so effectively – despite playing some fairly nice football at times in the Arsenal third, we simply couldn’t break through. We got a penalty with just over fifteen minutes to play after Sterling was clumsily brought down by Bellerin (who, incidentally, should have been dismissed for a second yellow). Henderson just about converted it – Ospina should definitely have kept it out – but by this point the goal was little more than a consolation.
Any vague, wild hopes of a miraculous comeback were quickly quashed. Can picked up a stupid second yellow with about five minutes to play to compound our misery, and Giroud topped it off with a nice goal in stoppage time. The result leaves us nowhere near the top four, and realistically ends our hopes of Champions League football next season. Perhaps this result could leave Rodgers’s long-term future in jeopardy, and the missing out on the top four is bound to cut our work out for us in the summer when trying to keep hold of our best players and attract new ones. In short, the future looks bleak. That said, Liverpool fans would do well to remember that a 7th place finish preceded our title bid in the last campaign: if there’s one thing that LFC have in abundance, it is the tendency to never lie down.
James Martin
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