Arsenal saw their winning run halted at five matches on Wednesday evening as Liverpool earned a hard-fought 2-0 victory in north London. Mikel Arteta’s Gunners controlled large swaths of the clash but to little reward.
Second-half strikes from Diogo Jota and Roberto Firmino saw the visitors claim three points and boost their own chances of claiming the Premier League crown come the end of the season. Whilst the result will of course be a disappointment to Arsenal, it also sees them lose ground in the race for Champions League football.
With the result potentially proving pivotal for the remainder of the campaign, it is fair to say that there are plenty of talking points. Take a look at how the national media reacted to the game and of course the result:
READ MORE: Andy Robertson delivers blunt Arsenal verdict after Liverpool's Premier League win
THE GUARDIAN
Before this match, Mikel Arteta had warned that the gap between Arsenal and the league’s title chasers remained far greater than he’d like. Halfway through it was tempting to belittle those concerns but, by the end, his point had been reinforced emphatically. Liverpool can now smell a return to domestic supremacy and it is because they took their chances, laying bare the difference in firepower to ensure proceedings were effectively settled just after the hour. It was a brutal lesson in efficiency and one that would not have looked especially likely to the uninitiated: nights like this could easily come to define a season that may now go down to the wire.
Jurgen Klopp, an agitated figure for the opening 45 minutes as Arsenal’s tempo smothered his team, could depart in the knowledge Liverpool are a mere point behind Manchester City, who they face at the Etihad in three and a half weeks. It might not have been that way if Martin Odegaard had scored early in the second half, as he should have, but the immediacy and certainty of the punishment Liverpool meted out was certainly that of potential champions.
THE TELEGRAPH
Whether or not Liverpool win the Premier League title this was the performance of champions. Few teams would have withstood a fierce onslaught from a buoyant Arsenal but Liverpool did just that and then took them apart in a devastating seven-minute spell. It was brutal. It was emphatic. It was impressive. It is what champions do.
There is a preternatural calmness to them that was summed up by another imperious display from Virgil Van Dijk at the heart of the defence with Jordan Henderson providing a similar level of self-possession in midfield. It allowed Liverpool to walk through a storm in north London.
At the end, as the Arsenal fans had been quietened and only the large wedge of Liverpool supporters could be heard, it was Van Dijk and Henderson who led the celebrations following a result that resonated and felt profound.
MAIL ONLINE
It would be wrong to call this a statement result by Liverpool simply because they provide them all the time. In the Premier League, for example, Jurgen Klopp’s team have just delivered nine in a row.
Nevertheless there was something about the way Liverpool took this game away from Arsenal in eight second half minutes that told us everything about just how good Manchester City are going to have to be over the remaining nine games of another fascinating season if they are to defend their title.
Early in the second half, with Arsenal pressing and the crowd at the Emirates sensing an extension of their own team’s recent winning form, Klopp readied the cavalry. Draws are no good in this title race so Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino waited to join the game. But then Liverpool scored through Diogo Jota and Klopp made his two changes anyway.
THE INDEPENDENT
Two minutes. That’s how long it took for a glaring difference at either end of the pitch to be highlighted in the most definitive of ways.
First, Arsenal, still on top in the game without ever actually creating anything of note themselves, were gifted a chance. They were thwarted.
Then, Liverpool, struggling for any kind of rhythm in the match, fashioned an opening hardly worthy of the name. They took it, and went on to win 2-0.
