Monday, 31 December 2018

Liverpool’s raggedness in swatting aside Arsenal may yet give rivals hope | Jonathan Wilson

Few teams who win 5-1 can ever be said to have played badly but how good, really, were Jürgen Klopp’s side against Arsenal?

There was a moment just before half-time on Saturday, with Liverpool 3-1 up, when Jürgen Klopp strode to the edge of the technical area, eyes flashing behind his glasses, finger jabbing, fury written across his face. Sadio Mané had given the ball away cheaply and had failed to track back and Arsenal had briefly threatened. A couple of minutes later, Mohamed Salah was bundled over by Sokratis Papastathopoulos, converting the resultant penalty and Liverpool were 4-1 up. It was one of those days: however sloppy Liverpool were at times, Arsenal were much, much worse.

In the other technical area, a grimacing Unai Emery looked even more like Alan Partridge than ever, as though trying to give a speech to the sales conference of a firm specialising in coal-effect fires after piercing his foot on a spike. By midway through the first half, he had given up his guiding role on the touchline to sit on the bench: there is, in the end, only so much you can do with those players. The impact Emery has made at Arsenal, the change in style and focus, has been remarkable but sometimes the scorpion is going to sting the frog, however self-defeating it may be, because that is what a scorpion does.

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from Football | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2R1yZQ3

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