It was in keeping with this fun, vigorous, goal-shy game, a Cup tie that felt like watching a duel played out with a set of unloaded pistols, that the day was in the end decided by an own goal.
Even this was a goal created by a piece of wonderful craft at one remove as Trent Alexander-Arnold delivered a free-kick of such malevolent pace and accuracy, a horrible flat, howling, dipping thing, that Jakub Kiwior could only nod the ball into the net from the middle of a knot of his own players.
The second goal in Liverpool’s 2-0 win was scored by Luis Díaz in the final seconds, the 30th shot of the game and the eighth on target. Both teams presented a hugely convincing 90-minute argument for the value of a dedicated elite level finisher, the crowd at the Emirates treated instead to a shared Kai Havertz-Darwin Núñez exhibition in contrasting forms of bluntness.
At one end, Havertz: mannered, smart, well-schooled and startlingly meek and apologetic in his finishing style. At the other end Núñez cartwheeling about the place like an unmoored catherine wheel, spanking the ball towards goal like he hates it. There is so much basic physical talent in Núñez, but also so much random cause and effect. Perhaps some hyper-advanced algorithm might one day be able to predict the movements and choices of a fully dandered-up Darwin. But no human mind has yet been able to devise it.
Havertz, for his part, had five shots in the first half out of 19 touches overall. These are the stats of a killer. But Havertz isn’t a killer. He’s the shark in Jaws who isn’t Jaws, a footballer who just doesn’t have that great white bite radius. He has many other talents. But asking him to pose as a cutting edge really isn’t good for him, an insistence on constantly reminding us of what he’s not.
Once again there was a sadness about watching this Arsenal team, a fine, intricate thing that just can’t help revealing the most obvious flaw in its construction, a flaw that is already pulling at the seams of every other part. One win in seven, five goals scored, a team lost in its own endlessly looped attacking patterns: it has become a cliche to say that Arsenal need to sign a goalscoring striker, to the extent it is tempting to rub your eyes and look for the deeper mysteries you’re missing here. The only real argument against signing a pure No 9 is that it might disrupt the existing attacking patterns mid-season. Fine. Disrupt this stuff. Just do it quickly.
This was at least a beautifully subtle and varied display of attacking impotence. Arsenal failed to score from close in, failed to score from distance, failed to score from the most imaginative of angles, failed to score with headers, long shots, one on ones. This was an exhibition of Total Failing To Score.
Often, Bukayo Saka would surge into a tiny pocket of space and jink across the front of the Liverpool area like a safecracker listening for the faintest of clicks, when it might have been better simply to lob some dynamite in and blow the bloody doors off.
Havertz showed his full range of uneasily shanked shots, offered up with all the unbound conviction of a man being asked to reach his arm around the U-bend without a rubber glove. On 37 minutes he nodded wide from a corner, offering a bashful little twist of the neck, where what was needed was a neck ricking headbutt.
Otherwise there was a fine performance from Martin Ødegaard and some smooth passing through midfield. Has any team ever looked so high grade, so well put together while going on a run of one win in seven games? Has any team of such youth ever looked so exhausted a season and a half into its current form? Arsenal should be better than this. They should, above all, be less obviously jaded.
There were three other notable points arising. First, this was an excellent occasion for the FA Cup, which does matter at a time when the structure of the club game is up for grabs. There was talk in the buildup that this game was vital to the Premier League title race. Well, maybe. But this FA Cup tie was also vital to both teams’ hopes of winning the FA Cup. The here and now also matters, as does football as a real-life flesh and blood glory machine.
Second, there was the obvious vigour of this Liverpool team, which has more in the way of untamed energy, and which remains in four competitions, top of the league and raggedly potent at the mid-point of the season.
Finally, of course, there was evidence of the value of genuine finishers, for all the demands of systems football, team-play, data-tracked contributions in every area. In a rare note of sympathy Liverpool came into this game without their own regular source of goals. Some will say Mo Salah isn’t having his most consistent season. On the other hand he is also the most goal-involved player in the Premier League, and a vital razor edge for a team in transition.
Liverpool will forge on without him while Egypt remain in the Africa Cup of Nations. Erling Haaland will have played at most one game for Manchester City in two months by the time the top-flight season begins again in earnest. For Arsenal, the sense of chances missed comes from many different places.
