Milner: We need to be more boring
Man City 18 Man Utd 18 Chelsea 18 Liverpool 19 Arsenal 19 Burnley 18 Tottenham 18 Leicester 18 Everton 18 Watford 18 Huddersfield 18 Southampton 18 Brighton 18 Crystal Palace 18 West Ham 18 Bournemouth 18 Stoke 18 Newcastle 18 West Brom 18 Swansea 18 were in, we need to see out the game. We need to be more boring and know when to tighten up.
“We have to learn from this. We play such good football, but we have to switch it off at times, take it easy, and not break every time. Against a good team like Arsenal you get 17 1 13 2 12 2 9 8 10 4 9 5 9 4 7 5 7 4 6 4 6 3 4 6 4 6 4 5 4 5 4 4 4 4 4 3 2 8 3 3
LF0 56 12 3 39 12 4 32 14 2 41 23 5 34 23 4 16 12 5 31 18 6 27 26 7 24 30 8 27 33 9 16 30 8 17 24 8 14 23 9 15 28 9 17 32 10 15 24 10 19 39 11 16 27 8 13 24 12 10 25 52 41 38 35 34 32 31 26 25 22 21 18 18 17 17 16 16 15 14 12 THE fireworks are guaranteed in this fixture and neither side disappointed in yet another goalfest which will go down as a Christmas classic.
Quite whether either of the managers will remember it like that is another matter but their teams served up six goals, incredible rollercoaster entertainment and it showed up everything good and bad about both Arsenal and Liverpool.
Liverpool’s Fab Four ripped the Gunners to shreds before Arsene Wenger’s men produced an incredible fight back – only for it all to end up even.
It was hard to catch your breath at times and remember who was winning, who was losing and yet it was a stunning game.
Arsenal were horribly embarrassed in the first half. They looked a shambles, and what did Wenger really expect when he played a rookie midfielder out of position at left-back against Europe’s deadliest forward?
Hardly surprising then that Mohamed Salah took poor Ainsley Maitland-niles apart.
It was the youngster who was caught out of position on Liverpool’s 26th-minute opener.
James Milner drove forward, Salah’s cross was deflected off Laurent Koscielny and there, rather saying everything about Arsenal’s defence, was pint-sized Brazilian Philippe Coutinho to head home.
Liverpool should have been out of sight at half time. Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane both wasting giltedged chances and it was no wonder that Arsenal were booed off at the break. They had been awful.
When Liverpool went 2-0 up on 52 minutes you really thought it was going to turn toxic inside the punished.” Philippe Coutinho’s first-half strike and Mohamed Salah’s deflected 52nd-minute effort put the visitors in command.
But Arsenal turned the match on its head. An Alexis Sanchez strike, then follow-up goals from Granit Xhaka and Mesut Ozil had Liverpool rocking, with boss Klopp (left) barely Emirates. Poor Maitland-niles was caught in possession, Milner led a break and found Salah and the Egyptian’s shot deflected in off Shkodran Mustafi and beyond Petr Cech’s despairing dive.
But the next 388 seconds was just incredible, fantasy, breathtaking stuff. That was how long it took for Arsenal to come back from the dead to somehow go into a 3-2 lead.
Hector Bellerin’s right-wing cross found Alexis Sanchez racing in at the back post, Liverpool’s Joe Gomez switched off and the Chile forward then headed home in the 53rd minute.
Three minutes later, Arsenal were level. Alex Iwobi fed Granit Xhaka and the Swiss midfielder, who had been having a stinker, hit a fierce swerving drive which flew past Liverpool keeper Simon Mignolet as he flapped horribly at the ball.
Suddenly the Emirates was alive and the atmosphere was pumping.
Arsenal had their tails up, they closed down Liverpool, won possession and Alexandre Lacazette’s lovely back-heel set up Ozil who cleverly lifted it over Mignolet.
Such a glorious goal and suddenly Arsenal thought victory, from the jaws of defeat, was going to be theirs.
Well, you didn’t expect them to be able to hang on did you? No, of course not.
Salah and Emre Can combined in the 71st minute, the ball was threaded through for Firmino and he smashed in a shot. Even though Cech got a big hand to it, the ball looped up and fell into the net.
It was a surreal match, an incredible advert for the Premier League and a reminder that these two always produce a thriller. able to believe his eyes. But Brazil star Firmino had the final say when he squeezed a 71st-minute equaliser past Petr Cech.
The Gunners were booed off at half-time and midfielder Jack Wilshere said: “We didn’t do ourselves justice in the first half. We played with fear and were scared.”