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.
Jürgen 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 Ødegaard 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.
