Match date: 8 February 2014

Coming into the match, Arsenal were top of the Premier League and Liverpool in 4th, with Brendan Rodgers ruling out Liverpool’s chances at winning the league this year. At that time, Liverpool were 8 points off the top and 6 points off of Manchester City and Chelsea.

During his time at Liverpool, Rodgers has tried to play some mind games, one of them famously depicted in the “Being Liverpool” documentary, in which Rodgers held up three envelopes during a pre-season talk with the team and said that the three names in the envelopes would determine how well Liverpool did that year. Aside from that, however, he hasn’t really been in a position where mind games needed to be played as Liverpool arguably met expectations last year and have just about overachieved this season.

For the match, Rodgers stuck with the same side that drew level with West Brom and beat Everton 4-0, lining up his side in a 4-3-3. For Arsenal, Wenger altered his side a bit from the one that beat Crystal Palace, moving Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain from a deeper central role to a wide right role and bringing Jack Wilshere back into the side, to play alongside Arteta, for Lukas Podolski.

Liverpool’s Attacking Three

Overall, this match was very similar to how Rodgers and Liverpool approached the Merseyside derby. Rather than playing with both Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge as centre forwards, as they have done for most of year when both have been fit, Rodgers opted to play a 4-3-3, with one of his striker partnership acting as a wide forward. Against Everton, Suarez and Sturridge alternated between who took on the lead striker role and who played on the left side of the attacking three. To supplement for a lack of defensive qualities from either of his two strikers as they did work back on the left side that day against Everton, Jordan Henderson was deployed on the left side of the two midfielders in front of Steven Gerrard, who started in the deeper role that he has become more familiar with over the last few matches, completing all seven of his attempted tackles.

Against Arsenal, Rodgers deployed the same sort of idea as he did against Everton. Again in a 4-3-3, but this time, Suarez and Sturridge were a bit less fluid in their positional rotation. Sturridge stayed primarily through the middle while Suarez played on the right side of Liverpool’s attack, with Sterling on the left. Unsurprisingly, this meant that Henderson shifted over to the right of the two in front of Gerrard, with Coutinho moving to the left. Below, on the left is Liverpool’s match against Everton. On the right, Liverpool’s match against Arsenal. Courtesy of whoscored.com.

There are a few different reasons as to why Brendan Rodgers did this. The first is that, against a teams like Arsenal and Everton, who play possession-based football, you want to have more numbers in midfield, especially with how narrow Arsenal’s midfield have been playing throughout the year. So out of possession, Liverpool looked like a 4-1-4-1, with Gerrard in between the defense and midfield and Sturridge as a lone striker.

The second reason, is that Rodgers’ wanted to limit the influence of the opposition’s more attacking full back in both matches. In the Merseyside derby, Everton were unlucky not to have Seamus Coleman available and so Leighton Baines was undoubtedly going to be more of a threat for Liverpool than John Stones, so in response to that, Rodgers put Sterling on the right to try to keep Baines back. Against Arsenal, the same concept applied; Rodgers moved Sterling to the left to keep Bacary Sagna pushed back a bit.

The last reason, shown in particular on Sterling’s second goal, is that with Sterling on the left, any ball over the top would see Sterling in a foot race with Per Mertesacker rather than Laurent Koscielny.

Liverpool Press, Play Quick

In the above section, the similarities in Liverpool’s formation when playing against Everton and Arsenal were noted, but how they played against these two and in their 5-0 victory against Tottenham at White Hart Lane are arguably Liverpool’s best three performances of the season. The matches all have a distinct familiarity about how Rodgers instructed his team to play, with good pressing in midfield and quick balls into space for the forward players.

Prior to the match, there were a fair number of pundits and supporters suggesting that Rodgers should start Joe Allen over Coutinho to help Liverpool control the midfield a bit better, but as Coutinho showed in the match against Everton, when played in a central role, he is capable of both breaking up play and continuing his duties as a playmaker. Throughout the match against Arsenal, you could see Liverpool’s number 10 consistently hassling Arsenal’s midfielders and stopping them from playing. On Özil’s first possession of the match, soon after Liverpool scored their first goal, Coutinho came in and won the ball. His pressing seemed to get the better of Wilshere mentally as the Arsenal midfielder was clearly frustrated with Coutinho’s physical play. What encapsulated his performance best however, was his play leading up to and including his assist to Daniel Sturridge. He stepped in front of Wilshere to intercept a pass from Özil and then played about a 40 yard ball splitting Monreal and Koscielny for Sturridge to put Liverpool 4-0 up.

Coutinho is just one example of Liverpool’s pressing and passing on the day, however, as they all excelled in executing Brendan Rodgers’ plan. Consistently, Liverpool looked to penetrate quickly and get the ball to forward runners. The third Liverpool goal came after Jordan Henderson won the ball off of Özil and within seven touches and two passes, the ball was in the back of the Arsenal net. The fifth goal as well was a simple ball, this one over the top, that allowed Sterling to easily beat Mertesacker with pace and score his second goal of the match.

Liverpool pressed Arsenal and made it hard for them to play at a tempo they felt comfortable with and when they had their chances, they broke quickly and got the ball to the forwards with pace.

Özil

The £42.5m signing has struggled to have a consistent impact on Arsenal’s performance’s as of late. Against, Liverpool, however, he was outdone by Liverpool’s hardworking midfield and looked sluggish overall. Liverpool’s third and fourth goals were the result of him getting stuck on the ball and him misplacing a pass, respectively.

Perhaps more worrying for Arsenal supporters and Wenger, was his lack of influence on the match going forward. Credit to Liverpool’s pressing and shape, but Özil failed to play the ball into Giroud anywhere less than 10 yards outside of Liverpool’s penalty area. He too frequently lingered in the wide areas and hoped to receive the ball rather than drop a bit deeper as he did against Crystal Palace to try to have a more direct influence on the match.

Arsenal Miss Flamini, Giroud Struggles

Perhaps Liverpool may not have been able to play so quickly on the break had Flamini been eligible for the match, but unfortunately for Arsenal, he wasn’t and Wenger opted to start Jack Wilshere alongside Mikel Arteta as the two holding midfielders in Arsenal’s 4-2-3-1. Arteta, positionally, has certainly improved during his time at Arsenal as he has been relied upon so much in that role before Flamini’s return to the club. However, he is more of a deep-lying playmaker than a defensive midfielder and with Jack Wilshere possessing the mentality to break the lines with his dribbling and one-twos, he is not disciplined enough to play in a holding role without a true defensive midfielder beside him. So without Flamini and with Arteta and Wilshere, Arsenal were exposed on the break as Liverpool played extremely quick from their midfield into their forwards. The duo’s lack of awareness on the break was very evident on Liverpool’s third goal when Sterling had acres of space on the left side of Liverpool’s attack. With Mertesacker shifting over to cover Sturridge and Koscielny to Suarez, the late recovery run of Arteta Wilshere, more so than Arteta, was straight into the box rather than looking to see Sterling making a wide open run at the back post.

After the match, Giroud admitted, via Twitter, that he had a poor match, but Arsenal supporters shouldn’t place too much blame on him as he’s led the line all season for Arsenal and has looked increasingly tired in recent matches. He rarely got the ball from his teammates near the Liverpool penalty area and only managed one shot on target and that was only after Liverpool had scored all five of their goals.

Conclusion

It will be interesting to see more where Arsenal go from here than where Liverpool go. Coming into the match in first, Arsenal drop to 2nd, face Manchester United in their midweek Premier League match, Liverpool in the FA Cup next weekend, and then another midweek match, this one being against Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Wenger should have a discussion between himself and the coaching staff as to what to do with Özil and Giroud, both who look tired and in need of a rest.

Liverpool continue to shine in home matches and while supporters might again be thinking about a possible title challenge, it is becomingly increasingly likely that Brendan Rodgers and Liverpool will be in the top 4 at the end of the year and playing Champions League football next season.