Match date: 28 September 2020

Arsenal beat Liverpool 2-1 in their last league fixture, after Liverpool were 1-0 up in that game. Arsenal then beat Liverpool on penalties in the Community Shield at the start of the year, so coming into the fixture, you had to expect that there was going to be a good tactical matchup between Klopp and Arteta.

Perhaps the bigger calls for Arteta were in midfield where he certainly went with a more physical two in Elneny and Xhaka than taking more of a chance with Ceballos. For Liverpool, it was an as expected starting XI, with the only observation being that had this been the beginning of the 2019/2020 season, Klopp likely would have gone for Milner in midfield over Keita, but it seems Klopp is starting to trust the Guinean in bigger games.

Liverpool Beat Arsenal’s Press

Arsenal were never over ambitious in pressing Liverpool very high up the field, instead they sat in a medium/highish block with a line of four behind Lacazette as a long centre forward, backed by a back five. With Willian and Aubameyang dropping into the line of four, the two attacking players also setup relatively narrow, making it more difficult for Liverpool to find Wijnaldum and Keita in central areas. While Fabinho was able to get on the ball from his centre backs, he was either bouncing it from one centre back to the other or playing the ball wide to Robertson and Alexander-Arnold who were both free due to Willian and Aubameyang’s slightly narrower position.

Arsenal, however, never had too many issues with Robertson and Alexander-Arnold picking the ball up from Fabinho or the centre backs around midfield; in those situations, Bellerin and Maitland-Niles would push forward to apply pressure and Willian and Aubameyang would come help. The issue here was that Salah and Mane’s movement allowed the Liverpool full backs easy options going forward and often centrally, so while Arsenal may have denied Liverpool access to central areas in the middle third of the field, all the champions needed to do was play around the initial Arsenal block before then playing centrally.

What became most problematic for Arsenal was when they did try to push higher up the field and apply pressure on Gomez and Van Dijk. At those moments, Willian and Aubameyang would support Lacazette, meaning Bellerin and Maitland-Niles would push on to the Liverpool full backs, leaving Holding, Luiz, and Tierney in, essentially, a 1v1 situation with Mane, Firmino, and Salah, respectively, which Liverpool were able to take advantage of to the extent that Arteta highlighted it in his post-match comments:

We tried to put them under as much pressure as we could. We were really aggressive trying to high press in many moment, but Van Dijk plays a 60 yard pass to Salah’s chest and they are out and you have to travel 50 metres, you know, and this is real quality.

Liverpool’s second goal was a direct result of Arsenal attempting to press higher up, but Van Dijk being able to find a long diagonal out (this time to Firmino). In the clip below, you can see the build up to that goal. As Gomez, Fabinho, and Van Dijk drop deeper, they invite the Arsenal press higher and higher. Lacazette sticks with Fabinho, as he did for much of the game, again to clog the middle of the field, while Aubameyang looks to press Gomez and Willian makes a forty yard sprint to close down Van Dijk before the Dutchman plays his diagonal to Firmino to progress the ball for Liverpool.

With Arsenal’s high press and the resulting ball from Van Dijk, you saw the ramifications later on as Alexander-Arnold was able to get forward, receive the ball, and put a cross in with Aubameyang still recovering and on the receiving end of the cross was an unmarked Robertson, with Willian very slow to get back following his closing down higher up the field.

Liverpool’s Press and High Line

As good as Liverpool were on the ball, they were also able to take advantage of Arsenal’s play out of the back. At times, Arsenal were able to play into midfield due to Maitland-Niles rotating into a central position. Typically, Luiz and Holding would open up on either side of the penalty area and Tierney and Bellerin would take up wider positions. Elneny would be at the top of the box with Xhaka higher and Maitland-Niles would come in off the left. This worked a few times for Arsenal (as you can see in the video below), but more often than not when the Gunners did beat Liverpool’s press in this way, they lacked a player that was able to then progress the ball well on the dribble or with a pass.

More often than not, Liverpool were able to deny Arsenal from playing out of the back. The reigning champions’ pressing was organised and relentless. and looked to set three notable traps: allowing the ball out to either Tierney or Bellerin from their respective centre back or the ball into Elneny/Xhaka at the top of the box. This forced some direct turnovers and forced Arsenal to put passes out of play, but much of the success for Liverpool here was forcing an Arsenal defender to fear losing the ball and just played a hopeful ball forward for Gomez, Van Dijk, and Fabinho to easily deal with and start another Liverpool attack.

A big credit to the success of Liverpool’s front three and midfield press was because of Liverpool’s high line. Klopp said that Liverpool had to press Arsenal because of how they play and that without a high line to aid a press as high as Liverpool’s in this game would leave huge gaps in midfield for the opposition to play into, again, we saw this in the build up to Arsenal’s goal.

In the second half, there was an increase in the number of times Arsenal looked to play balls in behind Liverpool’s line. This led to two good chances by Lacazette, one of which saw the Frenchman played through by Ceballos who gave Arsenal that ability to play less direct balls behind the Liverpool line while still exploiting that space. Up until Ceballos introduction, so many of Arsenal’s balls behind Liverpool’s line were from David Luiz. As we saw from Van Dijk in the game, it can be an effective way to progress the ball under control, but it was never enough to really disorganise Liverpool’s line.

Changes

As mentioned above, Arteta brought Ceballos on for Xhaka and the Spaniard was able to create a big chance for Lacazette, but was unable to impact the game in any other way. The two biggest changes instead came when Arteta replaced Willian with Pepe and then Klopp later replaced Mane with Jota. At this point, with the game still at 2-1, Pepe was certainly pushing further forward and was not as helpful defensively as Willian. With that, Jota was able to find more space and get on the ball in good situations against Holding. The new Liverpool player had three good chances to score even before he scored his goal, with his best chance coming after a pass from Salah (who received a diagonal from Van Dijk, who was being pressed by Pepe) found him alone at the back post.

Looking Forward

As Klopp said after the game, Liverpool were very good in all phases of the game, from their pressing to exploiting the spaces that Arsenal left open. Arsenal looked good in spells and the ideas and principles that Arteta is implementing at the club show a lot of progression, but at some point there has to be questions asked about the player quality that he has available to him to compete against a team like Liverpool.

The consistency of Liverpool to be able to find ways around Arsenal’s press and their mid-block showed the significance that player quality, and not just their individual abilities, but the ability to utilise them collective, has in the implementation of ideas.