The Gunners arrived on Merseyside high on confidence at the top of the table, but were demolished as Liverpool scored four in a devastating opening 20-minute burst that could have brought them even more goals.
Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers said after the match:
Today, we were against a team that are very experienced and have led the league for a large part of the season.
We shifted it about tactically. We played Daniel Sturridge through the middle to try to exploit his speed centrally. Luis Suarez played in a wider role today and put in a selfless job.
We switched Raheem Sterling over to the left side to penetrate out to in and to control Sagna a little bit. Overall, the players were tactically brilliant and you saw their appetite and hunger for the game. That was important for us.
We were brilliant today, a wonderful performance in such a prestigious game between the two teams. We do a lot of work on our pressing. I always feel if we press well, we can pass well.
To play like that, not just the result, but the performance level was absolutely out of this world. I’m very pleased and it’s another marker for us that we’re getting better and improving all the time.
While Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, via the club’s official website had to say:
What is important is that we respond to the result, especially that we respond with a different performance because our performance overall was poor today; on the concentration level and on the pace.
Our defensive stability was very poor, we looked always vulnerable defensively.
Congratulations to Liverpool, they were the better team today and we were very poor today.
Only our fans were good for 90 minutes, that’s all.
We conceded two early goals on set-pieces and then we are always in a position where you have to come out but we knew that you need to be better focused in that kind of level. Overall our performance was just not good enough.
Maybe it’s better if I don’t talk too much, go home and respond well on Wednesday night because I include myself in that performance.
It raises the questions that we have to answer on Wednesday night.
Written by Steve Milne
