Arsenal 2-2 Liverpool: why Arne Slot’s team will be happier with a point

Slot had to change things up, so he pushed right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold further into midfield in the second half to give Liverpool an extra man in that area.

He also left his two central midfielders operating ahead of Ryan Gravenberch (Curtis Jones and Alexis Mac Allister) deeper so Liverpool had more options when playing out from the back. The same thing happened when Dominik Szoboszlai replaced Mac Allister for the final half hour.

At the same time, when Gabriel was injured, Arsenal tightened up and dropped instead of continuing to push, and it felt like they were trying to protect their lead rather than looking to score more goals.

That changed the shape of the game, but Liverpool still had to be wary of the Gunner’s threat on the counter-attack, and tried to balance that by pushing for an equaliser.

Against the so-called lesser teams, you can leave one-on-one situations on your defensive line, but Arsenal’s players in high positions are some of the best in the world and are able to beat individual players very easily, as we saw with Saka . goal.

With all that in mind, Liverpool’s plan was to try to hold onto the ball longer and wait for Arsenal’s players to switch off to give them opportunities, without leaving themselves open at the same time.

But again, we go back to the fact that the Gunners are also a top team defensively. We have already seen this season how well they are focused (against Manchester City with 10 men, for example) and they do not usually make the type of mistakes that let the rival in.

While Liverpool had a lot of possession after the break (63%), they didn’t necessarily have it in dangerous areas. Much of this happened in the middle of the pitch, where Arsenal were camped, and they were happy for Liverpool to play around them and go back and forth.

In the end, Arsenal only allowed themselves to open up a couple of times, and one of them was when Liverpool gave them a 2-2 lead.