Klopp masterclass reveals how much ground Arsenal need to make up at the top

Humbling defeat shows key players are not suited to Emery’s tactics, argues Chris Bascombe at Anfield

It is a curious fact that each time Liverpool avoid a home defeat, Sam Allardyce is entitled to feel more smug. Although it seems like a different era, it was April 2017 when Jurgen Klopp last experienced a Premier League loss at Anfield.

A former Liverpool player, Christian Benteke, scored twice for Allardyce’s Crystal Palace, with the winner coming from a set-piece. “Everyone knows Liverpool are pretty weak on corners,” Allardyce said, back in those days of yore when it was true.

Times have changed as the records accumulate. A 31-match unbeaten streak at home is Liverpool’s third best in history.

What will they be like when they hit their peak?

Listening to Klopp beforehand, you could be forgiven for believing this was a good time for Arsenal to come to Merseyside, his Liverpool players still apparently striving to find full throttle. There are a few even claiming hat-trick hero Roberto Firmino has endured an average season.

Unai Emery is now well briefed in how much this Liverpool side have improved – and just how far Arsenal must keep sprinting to get anywhere near them.

When Emery’s Sevilla side ended Klopp’s European dream at the end of his first season at Liverpool he exposed the imperfections in a side playing to the German’s idealistic instructions.

The roles were emphatically reversed last night.

Only two starters from that Europa League final – Dejan Lovren and Firmino – enjoyed the reunion with Emery. You can see the direction in which the Spanish coach will take Arsenal, the bursts of pace causing as much difficulty to the Anfield defence as any this season. But just like Klopp witnessed in the form of Alberto

Moreno on that night in Basel in 2015, Emery’s vision was undermined by the personnel and feeling a defensive calamity might strike at any time.

This made Arsenal’s enterprising approach both courageous and a little naive given Liverpool’s relish for counter-attacking.

Like Klopp, Emery has discovered a higher energy and more dynamic style will only get you so far with a flawed squad vulnerable to injuries.

Like Klopp, Emery has also inherited expensive purchases who do not suit his tactical approach and will be gone within a year.

No one represents better the change in Liverpool over three years than Firmino. It is worth remembering where the Brazilian career’s stood when Klopp arrived. Purchased the previous summer, he was barely used and often found himself on the wing. Argue in those days he would be the epitome of the modern, multidimensional striker, preferable to, say, Mesut Ozil, and the response would have been vitriolic.

Ironic, then, that as Emery constructs an Arsenal team in Liverpool’s image, he will be searching for his own Firmino while diplomatically seeking to ease Ozil out of the Emirates. The official line might be that Ozil was absent from the travelling party here due to injury, but suspicious minds doubt he would be included in a fixture such as this, anyway. Liverpool

Emery will be searching for his own Firmino while seeking to ease out Ozil

are too formidable, especially at home, for indulgent passengers.

As Liverpool manoeuvre themselves into genuinely new territory in a Premier League title race – now nine ahead of the rest – the biggest danger is thinking too far ahead. It is tempting to see a title race in segments, a collection a defining periods. Klopp will argue there are 18 pivotal days still to go, inclusive of every fixture.

What is so impressive about this team is they have ended the trend earlier in Klopp’s reign of solely rousing themselves for the marquee events. Yet when their rivals come, they are still as swashbuckling as ever.

It has taken them far and may lead them to their Promised Land in 2019.