LIVERPOOL...3 ARSENAL......3
Klopp likes it fast and frantic as Allen rounds off a thriller
Appropriately, anfield appeared to be leaking through ever crack and cranny by the end of this game. the main stand, now one giant building site, was letting in water, perhaps in solidarity with the two defences.
there were hurried evacuations, electrical shutdowns, torrents cascading from the sky. as a physical metaphor for the 90 minutes that preceded the downpour, it was close to perfect.
this being a league that nobody wants to win, here was a match played in similar spirit.
liverpool led twice in the first-half and surrendered both times. arsenal finally got in front after 55 minutes and held on until the final attack of the match when they, too, failed to maintain supremacy.
it was a brilliant, thrilling game, but strewn with errors and defensive lapses. in the end, liverpool earned a point with a bit of Jurgen Klopp’s heavy metal. a big old wallop into the box, a big old walloper of a centre orward on the end of it and a loose ball leathered into the net to conclude.
it wasn’t total football, but Klopp and his Kop adored it anyway. By then, snow was falling, which soon turned to rain and the roof fell in. arsene Wenger will know that feeling, too. at one point in the evening, leicester were drawing at tottenham and arsenal were leading here. in that moment, Wenger’s team were four points clear at the top. after Joe allen had scored the game’s sixth goal, and robert Huth leicester’s winner, that gap was goal difference alone.
arsenal might have settled for a point before kick- off; at the final whistle it must have felt like a blade between the shoulder blades.
it was their own fault, though, failing to defend some fairly agricultural routes to goal, once Klopp had introduced his battering ram Christian Benteke after 66 minutes.
By the end, even emergency signing Steven Caulker, a centre-half by trade and of late not a particularly reliable one, was up in the box and hoping to cause carnage. the ploy worked. Jordan Henderson lumped the ball in from deep, Benteke rose high, a chest higher than any other player in the vicinity, and his header looped across the area as arsenal scrambled to clear.
Substitute Joe allen, no doubt ignoring a nosebleed, arrived first, Frank lampard style, and defeated petr Cech at his near post. in an instant, Klopp was off. Down the touchline, as is his jubilant style when liverpool keep going to the bitter end. it is really all he has to cling to right now, but it kept him warm on a wet and snowy night.
there had been a lot of liverpool pressure late on, but little that seemed capable of piercing arsenal’s defence. it should have been their game, with olivier Giroud’s 55th minute goal the winner. Certainly, Giroud deserved more for a brave display.
He wore a small dressing on the back of his head, a wound from an earlier clash in the build-up to arsenal’s first goal, and it was his flick that caused the mistake for arsenal’s second. throughout he led the line courageously and the third was a just reward. Hector Bellerin fed the ball to the hard grafting Joel Campbell, who slipped it to Giroud. in one deft movement he sent Kolo toure spectacularly the wrong way and tucked the ball into the corner past Simon Mignolet.
‘a silent song’ was Klopp’s description of the football arsenal play under Wenger. He says he p preferred heavy metal. ‘i like it loud,’oud,’ he insists. in which case, he would have loved this, in particular a first half that might as well have been orchestrated from the clouds by lemmy of Motorhead.
it was headbanging, migraine-inducing stuff, complete with four goals in the space of 15 minutes, some frantic riffing and a couple of mesmerising solos.
Wenger stood on the touchline as if trying to make sense of it all; Klopp went nuts and was spoken to by the referee.
it was, in many ways, a typically confusing 90 minutes.
We saw the best of liverpool in the performance of the season so far from roberto Firmino and the worst in the way they failed to hang on to a lead and struggled consist- ently against set pieces. Wee saw the worst of arsenal inn sloppy defensive errors thatt led to goals, but the best, too, , in the wit with which they got t back into the game.
Most of all, we were entertained. at times, it wasn’t even heavy metal. it was punk.
the game was ten minutes old when theo Walcott made the error that led to liverpool’s first goal. He lost control of the ball, overrunning it into the path of emre Can, who cut inside and shot through a crowd.
Cech saw it late but reacted magnificently, parrying the ball with both hands.
it was his misfortune that it fell to Firmino. He altered his angle swiftly and shot through the legs of laurent Koscielny,Koscielny giving Cech no chance. it was a beautiful finish, exactly what liverpool hoped they were getting for £29million last summer.
and it lasted all of four minutes. the ball was played upfield and Giroud got the better of Mamadou Sakho in the air, although the pair clashed heads and the arsenal man required treatment.
liverpool failed to clear the loose ball which was picked up by Campbell.
He played the sweetest reverse pass into aaron ramsey which so flummoxed the liverpool defence that the Welshman as good as passed the ball in at the near post.
So back up the pitch we went where, five minutes later, arsenal spurned several attempts to clear the danger in midfield — including two ricochets off the unfortunate Campbell — before James Milner finally fed the ball to Firmino on the edge of area once more.
this was another pearl — a curling, teasing shot that fooled Cech into thinking he had a chance, before moving tantalisingly out of his reach and into the top corner.
this was the Firmino Klopp hoped to have inherited. Marked as an overpriced flop before liverpool changed manager, Klopp said he was pleased to be working with him — announcing he had wanted to bring him to Borussia Dortmund, from Hoffenheim, but couldn’t afford the fee. Now we know why. a pity that he never really got the chance to enjoy such a splendid display.
Just six minutes after giving liverpool the lead a second time, Firmino was reined in again.
ramsey benefitted from a lovely clipped pass over the top of liverpool’s back line and lobbed Mignolet, before Sakho headed over with the ball goalbound.
From the resulting corner, however, a flick by Giroud struck the inside of the goalkeeper’s standing leg and diverted the ball over his line.
Giroud claimed it, Mignolet didn’t, but the dubious goals panel is likely to make his contribution plain, even if little else is these days.