Arsenal are too good at defending for their own good, and the disappointing draw to Liverpool shows why

LONDON — That Arsenal are the best out-of-possession team in Europe has been apparent for some time now. At their full compliment, the back four has an aura not seen in these parts since the back four. They love defending and so do the six in front of them.

Perhaps they love it too much. Arsenal play like a team who are two goals up when their lead is only one. Sit deep, let the waves crash upon us, what we have, we hold. More often than most they do hold. Indeed for the first 36 minutes of the second half, this battered backline, held together by whatever Mikel Arteta could rustle up on his substitutes’ bench, looked like it might just do that. 

Then came one through ball judged to perfection by Trent Alexander-Arnold and the sort of composed pass Darwin Nunez only seems to play to Mohamed Salah. That was about it from Liverpool in terms of quality chances, even in a second half where territory and possession swung in their direction. It was all they needed to retain their four-point cushion over the Gunners.

There was some irony that Liverpool’s second equalizer came from a rare burst forward in numbers by Arsenal. If Gabriel Martinelli had stayed on the edge of what was becoming a back six, maybe they might have held on. But if the mistake hadn’t come this week, there is no reason to believe it wouldn’t have against Newcastle, Chelsea or Inter. Arsenal are too good — even against the best opposition — to leave matters as open to chance as they do when they sit on a one-goal lead.

The mitigating factors seem without end. Arsenal had come into this game without their press leader and creative hub in Martin Odegaard. And the two most compelling options to start at left back against Salah. And one of the best center backs in the world. They lost another with barely any of the second half played. From Gabriel and William Saliba to Ben White and Jakub Kiwior, flanked by their second-choice defensive midfielder (Thomas Partey) and an 18-year-old box-to-box midfielder who Arteta is training up to be a left back (Myles Lewis-Skelly). It is a ringing endorsement of this club that that backline kept Salah et al to six shots worth less than half an expected goal.

Not for the first time this season, you could sense that good fortune might not be on Arsenal’s side. Ibrahima Konate was more than a little fortunate that Stockley Park agreed with Anthony Taylor that he had got the ball in the process of sending Martinelli flying. Liverpool might also have felt aggrieved to see a free kick given against them for Leandro Trossard kicking the ball into his own face but that would surely intermingle with relief that Taylor saw a foul in one or both of the duels Kiwior and Kai Havertz won on the edge of the visitors’ box in the 90th minute. The ball was subsequently poked in by Gabriel Jesus, booked after the final whistle for his furious response to a corner incorrectly awarded as a goal kick.

For all that there is room for Arteta’s side to improve you could not blame him or anyone else for thinking this might just be Arsenal: The Murphy’s Law Year. Arteta declined to comment on the incidents that didn’t go his way, reserving his disappointment for his team’s failure to execute in the defining moments.

“Without conceding nothing basically we gave two goals away,” said Arteta. “That’s the really frustrating part, and that we couldn’t see the game out, especially looking at ourselves and two things that we didn’t do in certain aspects.”

A backline anchored by William Saliba and Gabriel might be able to deliver 90 faultless minutes against the best in the land. It might simply be asking too much of Kiwior and Lewis-Skelly, who both chased the ball when one needed to chase Salah for Liverpool’s second equalizer. When Arsenal were down to the bare bones in defense, they didn’t keep Liverpool honest at the other end. A couple of better touches from Martinelli and that might have changed but too often it was him and a couple of support runners trying to do it all themselves.

Frustration with what might have been done to them intermingles with what they did or did not do themselves. As Bukayo Saka acknowledged after the match, “We feel like we didn’t show our best selves for the full 90 minutes” For 45 though, they really had.

Theirs was a swaggering assertion of their superiority over the league leaders. Across the pitch, they were plainly superior to their opponents. Declan Rice, as good as he has been this season, and Mikel Merino had the muscularity to control the pitch, aided by Havertz and Leandro Trossard dropping deep. That manufactured the space for Arsenal to isolate the Liverpool fullbacks. Barely 10 minutes had been played before Andrew Robertson was seemingly arguing with Virgil van Dijk, his arms out in frustration as if to ask what exactly he was supposed to do when Saka was flying at him. When White clipped a pass over the top to isolate his No. 7 with Robertson, the outcome seemed inevitable. Even at full pelt Saka was going to beat his man, get on his left foot and drill home.

Arsenal just looked so far ahead. Even Virgil van Dijk’s equalizer didn’t set them off their stride. The hosts seemed to understand that even that chance had come from auxiliary right back Partey doing well to shut down Luis Diaz. Dominant in open play, stood over a dead ball Rice kept lofting in crosses just begging for a touch. Mikel Merino had already diverted one wide before powering home just before the interval.

Arne Slot was certainly impressed by what he saw.

“They can position themselves in, I think [Arteta] said once, 40 different setups. You prepare a gameplan you expect something but you cannot tell your players 40 different options. You try to prepare them in the best possible way but now they play with a false nine, they didn’t come that many times with a full back inside,” he said. 

“We could prepare [the team] a bit better at halftime for what we saw in the first half. We took some more risks. The main thing was we put more energy into it. We pressed them more aggressively from the start. I saw that also we could keep going where they had to take a few of their quality players off because they couldn’t go on. Maybe that helped us a bit as well.”

Even before the substitution of Gabriel and Timber, however, Arsenal had been dropping off, much as they did against Leicester, Tottenham and even Wolves. Perhaps they were too tired to keep going. Martinelli, for instance, had run himself into the ground in support of his left back. Diaz and Salah had hardly been doing the same. Merino looked like a man completing his first 90 minutes in five months. Two substitution windows were eaten up when Gabriel and Timber could not continue.

In such circumstances, it is hard to shake the very human instinct to hunker down, all the more so when you know yourself to be incredibly good at it. No one, however, is good enough to make sitting back on a one-goal lead anything other than an almighty risk.