We'll start the thread with a re-post from the always brilliant E2K. Starting lineups will be provided when they are available.
Officials:
Referee: Anthony Taylor
Assistant Referees: Gary Beswick, Adam Nunn
Fourth Official: Jon Moss
VAR Official: Stuart Attwell
Form Guide (Last 6 in All Competitions):
Liverpool (WWDWDW): Wolverhampton Wanderers (h) W 2-0; Tottenham Hotspur (n) W 2-0; Manchester City (n) D 1-1; Norwich City (h) W 4-1; Chelsea (n) D 2-2; Southampton (a) W 2-1
Arsenal (DWWLWW): Brighton (h) D 1-1; Valencia (a) W 4-2; Burnley (a) W 3-1; Chelsea (n) L 1-4; Newcastle United (a) W 1-0; Burnley (h) W 2-1
Previous Meetings (Liverpool under Jürgen Klopp):
29/12/2018: Liverpool 5-1 Arsenal
02/11/2018: Arsenal 1-1 Liverpool
22/12/2017: Arsenal 3-3 Liverpool
27/08/2017: Liverpool 4-0 Arsenal
04/03/2017: Liverpool 3-1 Arsenal
14/08/2016: Arsenal 3-4 Liverpool
13/01/2016: Liverpool 3-3 Arsenal
PLD 7 W 4 D 3 L 0 F 23 A 12
What they said:
“I’ve played in a lot of stadiums but for me there is nothing like playing at Liverpool. Nothing can beat Highbury, of course, but playing at Anfield was great. The fans always sing and hold up their scarves before and after the game – whether they have won or lost. It must be amazing if you are a Liverpool player” (Thierry Henry).
“I’ve said so many times these fans are amazing. This was the first time I was allowed to be able to watch them sing You’ll Never Walk Alone and enjoy it. This crowd have won so many points for this team and football club” (Thierry Henry, again).
“Liverpool is the city of music, of the working class and of football. Anyone who has managed in England knows it is a special place for football. That’s why they can always make miracles” (Arséne Wenger).
“For us, we don’t ever want to play against Liverpool – but it’s really a challenge, a good test” (Unai Emery).
“It is a different game. Maybe it is more easy because you don’t have to fight a lot” (Sokratis, on defending against Liverpool in comparison to Burnley).
“I’m happy at Liverpool. I’m happy in the city – I love the fans and they love me. I’m happy at the club” (Mo Salah).
Memories of Arses Past
This one has quite a bit of history attached to it:
It was the first fixture ever shown on the BBC’s famous Match of the Day programme, way back on 22nd August 1964. Bill Shankly’s reigning league champions won 3-2.
It provided the backdrop for what arguably remains the most dramatic end to a league season in the history of English (maybe world) football on 26th May 1989. No need to elaborate further on that, other than to say that the pain of every hiding Arsenal have taken at Anfield is merely a receipt.
It delivered further proof, if it were needed, that a very special talent had arrived when 19 year-old Robbie Fowler scored a hat-trick in 4 minutes and 33 seconds on 28th August 1994, a Premier League record that would stand for over 20 years until 2015, when the familiar figure of Sadio Mané achieved the same feat for Southampton in a scarcely believable 2 minutes and 56 seconds.
It essentially brought the curtain down on Liverpool’s 2008/09 title challenge on 21st April 2009, a night when Andrey Arshavin scored 17% of his career Premier League goals and the home side magnificently refused to stop clawing and scratching, recovering from 0-1, 2-3 and 3-4 behind to earn a point deep into injury-time that did little for their hopes of a 19th league title.
Conversely, just under 5 years later on 28th February 2014, it was the fixture that truly lit the fuse for another title challenge, a 5-1 win beginning a run of 11 straight victories that made us dream for a few precious weeks during that spring.
And in amongst all of those signposts and milestones, the rest:
A 2-0 Liverpool victory in August 1996 that ultimately meant nothing but will always stay with me due to the sheer, brilliant dominance of Steve McManaman over that game.
Neil Mellor’s screamer in November 2004 that clinched the Reds a late victory over the league champions.
Arsenal putting Liverpool out of both domestic cups at Anfield in the space of a few days in January 2007, on an aggregate scoreline of 9-4.
Peter Crouch’s perfect hat-trick a few weeks later during a 4-1 Liverpool win in March 2007.
A classic Champions League quarter-final in April 2008 marked by Sami Hyypia’s shotgun-blast of a header (one of the greatest you’ll ever see), Fernando Torres’ exquisite turn and finish, Steven Gerrard’s poise for the crucial penalty, the vital interventions of Ryan Babel who won that spot kick and ended the night pointing to the sky after scoring Liverpool’s fourth; and most of all, the relief, the relief that the Reds’ season didn’t end up being defined by Emmanuel Adebayor’s shit dancing or the failure of a single player in red to lay a finger on Theo Walcott.
And what of the current batch? Mo Salah’s glorious breakaway goal in August 2017, Bobby Firmino’s brace in January 2016 and his hat-trick in December 2018: 4-0, 3-3, 5-1. Since they last won at Anfield, a 0-2 win in the early days of the Brendan Rodgers era back in September 2012, Arsenal have conceded 22 goals in just six visits and lost by an aggregate scoreline of 22-8. The days of Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and, er, Júlio Baptista having their way with Liverpool on home territory suddenly seem a very long time ago.
All things considered, this is not a bad fixture to have at this stage of the season. Not bad at all.
The Opponents
There are statistical reasons for that statement, as well as intuitive ones. Let’s start with the statistical.
Liverpool are currently unbeaten at home in their last 41 league games since April 2017, second only to Chelsea’s mammoth 86-game run from 2004 to 2008 amongst Premier League-era teams. Conversely, Arsenal won only 7 out of 19 away from home in their first season under Unai Emery, 3 of which were at the relegated clubs (Huddersfield, Fulham and Cardiff). They conceded 35 goals in the process, and kept only a single clean sheet on their league travels (at Vicarage Road in April). They have since notched another at St. James’ Park on the opening weekend, of course, but that result may ultimately prove to have been achieved against another relegated side given Newcastle United’s likely trajectory under Mike Ashley and Steve Bruce.
Their heaviest defeat in that run came at Anfield over Christmas, where they actually went a goal ahead through Ainsley Maitland-Niles before capitulating so completely that they found themselves 1-4 behind by half-time. Liverpool were controlled and clinical in equal measure, finishing 2018 looking every bit the league champions-in-waiting that we believed them to be, but they were certainly never made to work for it and only rarely got out of the proverbial second gear. Firmino was gifted an open goal for the first, and had Arsenal players slipping and jumping out of his way for the second; simple long balls from set-pieces obliterated the Gunners’ defence for the third and fifth; and Sokratis, for all his protestations (until Virgil van Dijk set him straight, that is), was made to look like a pub player by Salah for the fourth, the Egyptian merely needing to run in a straight line rather than reach into his bag of tricks in order to draw a clumsy challenge from his opponent.
Was it a penalty, many asked afterwards, particularly in the context of the festive witch hunt against Salah that had begun a couple of days earlier following his side’s 4-0 win over Newcastle. It surely was (VAR would give it), but that doesn’t matter nearly as much as this one simple fact: Liverpool would have scored 10 if they had wanted to, penalty or no penalty. The Reds had, after all, just scored 4 against a Rafa Benítez team: the wet paper bag that was Arsenal’s defence that day presented little challenge in comparison. Instead, they merely accepted the gifts presented by their shambolic opponents and then put their feet up for the second half, enjoying a welcome rest after a busy December while barely being obliged to break a sweat.
That must have been soul-destroyingly embarrassing for any Arsenal supporters in the ground or tuning in at home. The same scoreline in 2014 had been borne of a first-half inferno from an irresistible team whose star had never burned brighter but would diminish all too quickly: Arsenal weren’t terrible, they were simply blown away by Luis Suárez, Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling and Philippe Coutinho. This time they were up against a better side, true, but their performance from the moment Maitland-Niles’ tapped in until Salah’s penalty hit the back of the next at the end of the first half was an utter mess. And presiding over that mess from a stationary position on the sideline, face frozen in a perpetual, open-mouthed grimace, was Emery.
This is where the intuitive part comes in. Writing any preview for an upcoming Liverpool game is fraught, due to the fact that I neither claim to be an expert nor make it my business to watch other teams play on a regular basis anymore: I’m not an analyst, I don’t do this for a living, and I’ve long since lost interest in any club side other than Liverpool. Therefore, the sample size is inevitably small. Yet Arsenal feel very familiar to me, as though time has stood still and every shortcoming and inadequacy that has bedevilled them on the pitch ever since the likes of Henry, Patrick Vieira, Sol Campbell and Dennis Bergkamp began to take their leave in the middle of the previous decade is still waiting to be addressed.
They continue to serve up irresistible football on a semi-regular basis: witness the manner in which they put Claude Puel’s Leicester City, typically obstinate opposition who beat Chelsea and Manchester City and drew with Liverpool last season, to the sword at the Emirates last October. In particular, watch their third, Mesut Ozil-inspired goal preceded by a move that was genuinely as good as any you will see anywhere in the world. At the time, it put them a couple of points behind Manchester City after a run of seven straight league wins, their only defeats coming against City and Chelsea in their opening two games. And when they followed up shortly thereafter with a hard-fought 1-1 draw against a superior Liverpool side at the start of November, making it thirteen unbeaten in all competitions, they looked like the real deal.
As it turns out, they weren’t. Not even close. If they had been, they would currently be preparing for a Champions League campaign alongside this weekend’s opponents, the same team that they would have already faced in the 2019 European Super Cup. Instead, they reacted to finding themselves as the clear favourites to finish third in early-April by winning 2 of their last 7, in the process losing to Everton (0-1 away), Crystal Palace (2-3 at home), Wolves (1-3 away), Leicester (0-3 away) and drawing with Brighton (1-1 at home), while exhibiting much of the same wretched defensive organisation as they had against Liverpool over Christmas. They would eventually finish a single point off 4th, following a top-four race that nobody involved seemed to care about.
There was, however, still hope in the form of a Europa League final against Chelsea that gave the winners a one-way ticket back to the big-time. Once again, as with their humiliation at Anfield, they folded, losing 1-4 to a team that barely had to work for such a large winning margin, in a European final no less. And the big concern for anyone of an Arsenal persuasion, the most worrying example of déjà vu, was surely Emery’s inability to intervene in any meaningful way to keep the game alive. His first substitutions only arrived at 0-3, and while one of them (Alex Iwobi) scored what could have been a vital goal, his team were too much of a mess once again for it to matter, coughing up 4 goals in 23 minutes after starting brightly (surpassing the 4 in 33 minutes at Anfield). Once again, at the least hint of pressure against a good side, they fell apart.
In some ways, it's harsh to place the blame for those performances on Emery’s shoulders. The squad was already deteriorating prior to his arrival, having lost a number of experienced, talented players over the preceding years, many of whom have never been adequately replaced up to this point. For example, of the 14 who featured in the 2017 FA Cup final, their last piece of silverware to date, man of the match Alexis Sanchez, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, their Europa League final executioner Olivier Giroud and Per Mertesacker were never available to Emery. Another 4 (Hector Bellerin, Laurent Koscielny, Rob Holding and Danny Welbeck) managed only 54 league appearances out of a possible 152 in the Spaniard’s first season. Aaron Ramsey, who scored the winner in the 2017 final, already had one foot out the door by the time Emery arrived and has since left for nothing, having himself managed only 13 league starts last season.
Furthermore, many of the players brought in by his predecessor have routinely failed to reach the standard required, most notably expensive arrivals such as Shkodran Mustafi, Granit Xhaka and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Emery didn’t buy those players, he inherited them. They’re not his fault per se, nor is it his fault that Ozil remains desperately inconsistent, that Mertesacker and Petr Čech retired in rapid succession, or that injuries decimated potentially key players such as Jack Wilshere, Welbeck and Koscielny to the point where all three have had to be cut loose.
Emery did bring in his own men as well, although we know all too well from the days of Liverpool’s “transfer committee” under Brendan Rodgers that a manager can often be at odds with those above him regarding new arrivals (perhaps the departure of Sven Mislintat indicates some friction in this regard?) Nevertheless, Sokratis and Lucas Torreira developed into stalwarts under this manager and both had wretched days at the office in Liverpool and Baku. Bernd Leno received mixed reviews for his first season in England (bad to middling, that is), Stephan Lichtsteiner must go down as a failure, and Mattéo Guendouzi was a favourite for much of last season but ended it as a mere substitute at 0-3 against Chelsea.
This summer’s business looks a mixed bag as well. Kieran Tierney for £25m could prove to be a superb signing given that he’s only 22 and has already shown plenty of talent during his time at Celtic (in the same league that served as an incubator for his international captain Andy Robertson and Virgil Van Dijk, before anyone says anything about its quality). And Nicolas Pepe, although pricey at £72m, is an exciting addition alongside Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, coming off a season where he was second only to Kylian Mbappe in Ligue 1 on 22 goals. If Emery is planning on outscoring the opposition, then that could be just the trio to do it. There is, after all, 84 points up for grabs from teams outside the top-six, teams that may not be able to handle that kind of concentrated attacking talent. It’s not an approach likely to produce a surprise title challenge, but with Chelsea and Manchester United both under the leadership of inexperienced managers and enduring problematic summers for different reasons, it arguably puts the Gunners in pole position for fourth.
Then again, they were also in pole position last April and collapsed, due largely to a porous defence. The 51 goals they conceded was good enough for the ninth-best defensive record in the division, and they almost certainly didn’t do enough to address it this summer. Tierney may help right away, of course, once he recovers from injury, but he’ll also have quite a personal adjustment to make in the short-term given that he’s been at Celtic since he was 7. And teenage defender William Saliba arrived for £27m from Saint-Etienne but was immediately loaned back for the season, meaning that even Van Dijk-levels of defensive excellence from the young man won’t benefit Emery’s team in 2019/20.
The only other defensive signing they’ve made is David Luiz, who appears to do virtually nothing for them in that regard. It speaks volumes that the first statistic I saw put forward to support his signing earlier in the month was the amount of through balls he attempted last season (not successful through balls, mind you, attempted through balls). The front-three may well profit from his runs into midfield, but supply to the strikers wasn’t Arsenal’s problem last season (only City and Liverpool scored more) and the Brazilian’s best days as a defender came with his limitations mitigated by Antonio Conte’s three-man central defence. Playing alongside Sokratis, Chambers or Holding (assuming Mustafi is sold) in a two won’t so much highlight his weaknesses as strip him naked for all the world to see. And even if he does play well, at 32 years of age he surely represents a temporary stop-gap more than anything.
What Luiz will almost certainly do is improve Arsenal’s ability to play out from the back, an approach that Emery tried his best to implement last season with mixed results. Dani Ceballos, a highly-regarded Spanish international loaned in from Real Madrid, will also be crucial in this regard. They’ll be hoping that the Spaniard does better than their last loanee from one of La Liga’s big two, Barcelona’s Denis Suárez, who managed a mere 4 league appearances last season, but Ceballos started brightly in his full league debut against Burnley last Saturday and the only question looks to be whether he can repeat that kind of performance consistently, especially away from the Emirates where Arsenal experienced such problems last season.
In all, the Gunners have registered a fairly healthy net spend this summer of around £94m once outgoings (most notably Everton’s signing of Iwobi for £28m) are taken into consideration. Look a bit closer, however, and it’s somewhat less impressive: they spent only £20m upfront on Pepe, with the balance to be paid in £13m instalments over the next 4 years, meaning that their net spend this summer is closer to £42m. This comes with the large caveat that they didn’t lose anyone they desperately needed (other than Ramsey, whose contract had expired), so the squad wasn’t substantively weakened in some areas by the imperative to raise funds for others. Still, given the amount of work required, it’s debatable whether sufficient strengthening took place to guarantee fourth place if Chelsea or Manchester United manage to put together a decent campaign.
Indeed, despite the headline figure of £138m gross spent over the summer, the Gunners have given every indication of being relatively cash-poor. They couldn’t afford Wilfried Zaha, ostensibly their number one target; the Tierney signing dragged on for weeks, a sure sign of the kind of haggling over a million or two that we saw repeatedly from Liverpool regimes over the years; one of their major arrivals (Ceballos) is only a loan deal that is unlikely to be made permanent by the parent club for anything less than extortionate money; another (Luiz) is a 32 year-old cut-price central defender; Pepe’s signing will affect five different transfer windows, five different transfer budgets; and their second-most expensive addition won’t arrive in north London until the summer of 2020.
As Swiss Ramble so expertly explained recently, the lack of Champions League football is hurting them. Having broken their club transfer record outright twice in quick succession for Lacazette and Aubameyang not too long ago, they suddenly find themselves having to pay piecemeal for their latest record arrival (£20m, £13m, £13m, £13m, £13m over five years) and addressing the massive ongoing problem in central defence with a mere £8m, spent on another defender of dubious defensive acumen (albeit hugely experienced). This is despite the Adidas kit deal (in the order of £60m per season) and improved Emirates shirt sponsorship deal (£40m per season) that are kicking in from 2019 onwards. With their absence from club football’s richest competition now certain to stretch to at least 3 years after previously qualifying for 19 in a row, top-four feels like an imperative in a way that it isn’t for Chelsea or United, especially with Stan Kroenke appearing to embody all of the worst-case scenarios any Liverpool fan ever had about FSG taking the club’s profits for themselves.
The road back is a long one. European champions Liverpool and domestic treble-winners Manchester City remain a fair distance ahead of them, while local rivals Tottenham are just back from a Champions League final and have made several potentially exciting additions in Tanguy Ndombele, Ryan Sessegnon and Giovani Lo Celso. Chelsea’s transfer ban and Manchester United’s ongoing inability to get out of their own way might give them some hope, but they had plenty of that in April and it meant nothing in the end.
Had their resistance stiffened even slightly during the run-in, had they managed even draws rather than defeats against Palace and Wolves or scored one additional goal against Brighton, they would have finished fourth and been able to depend on guaranteed Champions League revenues in the season ahead. Had they closed up shop at 0-1 or 0-2 in Baku and looked to slow the game down for 15 minutes, then Iwobi’s goal might have been more than just a statistic and they may have gone on to secure qualification that way, along with a trophy: instead they were murdered on the break. Had they had it in them to simply be hard to beat when it mattered, they may have even taken something from Anfield other than a hiding last December.
As it stands, they’re the same old Arsenal: on their day, breathtaking, but as the building blocks continue to pulled away (Ramsey the latest) and replaced with cheaper alternatives (e.g. a loanee the only midfielder to arrive this summer), this job simply isn’t about being breathtaking on their day anymore. Under the circumstances, with money for new players limited relative to the amount of rebuilding to be done, I have my doubts whether Emery is the right man for this particular job. Maybe it’s a case of the right man at the wrong time, but I’m not sure if he has it in him to bring the kind of pragmatism they need, at least not as much as a compatriot of his that Arsenal recently allowed to leave for China without so much as a conversation with his agent (but that’s another story). With a total of £8m spent on their two biggest problem areas (central defence and central midfield) vs. £72m on another attacker, it seems that pragmatism might be in short supply at the Emirates in general.
The Reds
No more than Arsenal, Liverpool don’t look to be in much of a mood to draw a line under the second-longest home unbeaten streak in Premier League history.
The Reds’ only game at Anfield so far this season, the one that extended the streak to 41, saw them go 4-0 up on Norwich City by half-time before effectively putting their feet up in the second-half. Since then, they’ve added the European Super Cup to the Champions League they won in June after a gruelling two-hour contest against Chelsea in the stifling heat of Istanbul. Between that trip to Turkey for a game that finished at around midnight local time, leaving them just three days to recover for the game at St. Mary’s, the Community Shield test against Manchester City and a number of players undergoing shortened pre-seasons after playing thousands of miles away in South America and Africa, Liverpool have barely had a chance to draw breath. Until now, that is: with six full days to prepare for this one, Klopp’s men should be well-rested and ready to go.
That’s good, because despite the obvious flaws in their team, Arsenal’s attacking threat has the potential to wreak havoc on the home side. Virtually every game Liverpool have played so far this season has seen opposition teams trying to target their high defensive line. City did it very well with balls in behind during the first-half at Wembley; we’ve seen two of the slowest front men currently operating in the Premier League, Teemu Pukki and Olivier Giroud, playing on the shoulder of the last man and being rewarded with goals; Christian Pulisic and Mason Mount were (correctly) undone by VAR in the Super Cup after runs in behind saw them putting the ball in the net, but it was desperately close; and both Chelsea and Southampton had real success targeting Liverpool’s defence and midfield with a high press. It’s an approach that we only saw in fits and starts from opposition teams during 2018/19, but is something that Liverpool will likely have to deal with in most games while they continue to get joy with it.
Normally, these problems are addressed at source: opposition strikers can make all the runs they want but it’s a waste of energy if the pass never comes. In the first half of the last home game, however, even newly-promoted Norwich City found themselves bearing down on Liverpool’s defence time and time again in the first half, Marco Stiepermann in particular finding himself in some good areas around the box and Alisson making a couple of good saves (the quality of which were bizarrely ignored by Sky’s commentary team). It was even more pronounced against Chelsea at times, with Lampard’s team pressing Liverpool high and N’golo Kanté bossing the middle of the pitch. Even against Southampton, Liverpool struggled to get a foothold in the first half. Looking at Arsenal’s winner against Burnley at the weekend, which came from Ceballos winning the ball back high up the pitch, it’s an approach that we will almost certainly see again to some degree on Saturday. Aubameyang, in particular, will surely be relishing the prospect, and Pepe starting would likely result in a real test for Trent Alexander-Arnold.
The midfield in particular has looked off the pace, but a full week’s rest post-Southampton should really help Liverpool. Fabinho has looked tired late in games despite having a full pre-season behind him, and he went down with severe cramp against Chelsea. Gini Wijnaldum was poor by his standards against City and didn’t start in Istanbul, but his quality is proven. Naby Keita has been unavailable due to continuing injury problems, and Oxlade-Chamberlain has mostly looked off the pace while he recovers from long-term injury (his opportunities have been limited anyway), although he looked significantly brighter in midfield against Southampton than he did wide on the left in Istanbul. Adam Lallana and Xherdan Shaqiri have yet to feature, and the limitations of Jordan Henderson and James Milner lining up together were evident again in the Super Cup.
The hope is that once everyone is fit and the right balance of personnel is available to the manager, the defensive issues we’ve seen so far will begin to iron themselves out. Losing your first-choice ‘keeper doesn’t help either. In addition, given that Klopp will have his players together for six full days prior to Saturday’s game, it’s likely that some training ground tweaks will also be made that will hopefully improve matters. The worry is that opposition teams have yet to expressly target Liverpool in this manner over a sustained period of time, so we’re into new territory in some ways. It will certainly continue to be one of the main pre-match tactical talking points for the foreseeable future, the easiest solution being for Liverpool to utterly dismantle someone’s high press as an example to everyone else that it simply isn’t worth it. They’re certainly capable.
The extent to which Arsenal follow the template-du-jour for beating Liverpool is something of a catch-22 for Emery, and will be very much dependent on his appetite for risk away from home against the European champions. Does he select Pepe-Aubameyang-Lacazette together for the first time? Does he give them licence to press from the front? Assuming he does, will he push the rest of the side ten yards further forward in support, or instead sit them further back so as not to be overrun at the other end? Do that, and the danger is that his attack will be isolated, especially given that the majority of Liverpool’s defensive issues so far have been caused by teams aggressively winning the midfield. Yet if he pushes the entire team forward, it gives Liverpool’s superior front-three space to wreak havoc of their own. Does he sit the entire team deep, then, and give Liverpool a break from teams probing what appears to be a genuine weakness? It’s a minefield for Emery.
Caution has long been the traditional approach to taking a point from Anfield, but in December Arsenal were neither here nor there. Whatever their tactical plan, they’ll need to pick a poison this time and stick to it.
Team News/Prediction
Hero of Istanbul, Ádrian, continues to deputise for Alisson. They were forgotten by many in the aftermath of his late calamity at St. Mary’s, but the Spaniard’s saves were a vital part of a tired Liverpool collecting three points from Southampton the last day.
Otherwise, it’s likely to be a clean bill of health for the home side. A first start of the season for Keita is a nice idea: his comfort on the ball and ability to evade pressure would be the perfect antidote to any kind of high press, but I think the manager is more likely to go conservative in his midfield selection given the opposition. A similar starting line-up to the Norwich game is probable, with the obvious exceptions of the returning Sadio Mané and the goalkeeper. Matip and Gomez remains a toss-up: personally I would go with Matip, but it could be either. Oxlade-Chamberlain started the last two games and is a potential wildcard to start against his former club: Ádrian; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Henderson, Wijnaldum; Mané, Firmino, Salah.
For Arsenal, the only injuries are defensive ones. Tierney hasn’t played since May and is still on the way back from a double-hernia. Emery recently estimated another month for Bellerin, while Holding has only just returned to U-23 action. Sead Kolasinac had been missing-in-action following an off-the-pitch incident over the summer, but returned as a substitute against Burnley and is in contention to start at Anfield, although Nacho Monreal has done little wrong so far. Luiz made his debut alongside Sokratis at the weekend and that partnership is likely remain in place.
Aside from Aubameyang, no one further forward looks nailed-on to start at Anfield. Youngsters Joe Willock and Reiss Nelson have started both games so far, but will Emery be willing to risk starting them away to the best team in Europe? Torreira has yet to start for the Gunners this season, while Guendouzi has started both games. Xhaka captained the side at Newcastle on the opening weekend but missed out against Burnley due to injury. Coupled with how well the midfield played against Dyche’s “battlers”, some Gunners fans have (optimistically) taken that to mean that the Swiss international might be getting phased out, but he’s likely to be back in the fold at the weekend. Ozil was apparently left out against Burnley due to illness rather than continuing security concerns, so he’ll be back in contention too, although surely unlikely to start. Mkhitaryan started at St. James Park but didn’t feature at the weekend.
Ceballos’ excellent performance that day probably gives Emery his starting central midfield three (Xhaka, Guendouzi and Ceballos), and with Aubameyang starting upfront, that just leaves the wide areas. I think he starts Pépé on the left for his full debut, and what’s more, I think he should start him because his pace will undoubtedly trouble Trent (who has yet to hit his stride this season) or Gomez, depending on who starts. It also gives the Gunners ample scope for getting in behind the home side’s defence, and will reduce the likelihood that Aubameyang is isolated again, as he was in December. Will Pépé track back, is the question? Monreal will have his hands full down that side with Trent and Salah if he doesn’t.
The other side is a bit trickier. Mkhitaryan, Nelson or even Lacazette could start there. The latter missed out in December, eventually coming on in the second half, and also started from the bench against Newcastle on the opening day. Emery’s favoured formation typically appears to be 4-2-3-1, and he certainly won’t be starting with two up-top away to Liverpool (you would think), so it seems that Lacazette will either start from the right or he won’t start at all. His manager has already shown a willingness to drop the Frenchman, and starting with that potentially lethal front-three for the first time at Anfield is probably too much of a risk. 7 wins out of 19 away from home, 35 goals conceded and only a single clean sheet is a brutal away record, so it may well be the case that he starts with a more defensive line-up. Lacazette also gives him an option off the bench. I think it’s a choice between Mkhitaryan and Nelson, with the former’s experience probably getting the nod: Leno; Maitland-Niles, Luiz, Sokratis, Monreal; Xhaka, Guendouzi, Ceballos, Pepe, Mkhitaryan; Aubameyang.
It’s a good team in a lot of ways, but given what we saw from the Gunners away from the Emirates last season, it’s highly debatable whether they’ll have the ability to sufficiently keep Liverpool’s front men in check over the 90 minutes. If Arsenal set up to have a go, it could be a high-scoring game in which Liverpool are likely to come out on top. Sit deep, and the scoreboard might be a bit more respectable depending on the work done on the training ground since last December, but 4-2 or 2-0, it doesn’t matter. There is a gulf in quality between the two teams that Arsenal have yet to bridge in any meaningful way, and provided the six days between Southampton and Arsenal results in a fresher Liverpool than we’ve seen so far, the three points should remain at Anfield.
