Premier League: Arsenal 3-3 Liverpool
What a thriller this was between two teams on top of the league and they gave it all to the fans today. Down 2-0 at the 52nd minute, only a few Arsenal fans would imagine that the club will come back and lead 3-2 in about five minutes after conceding the second Liverpool goal! Both offense were great and Liverpool found their way back in this game with a equalizer.
The last 15 minutes of the match were punctuated by several chances on each side but the clubs would finally settle for the draw. Regardless this was one of the best matches so far in the Premier League this season.
Coach Wenger comments on the thrilling night in London:
We showed quality, character, gave everything and overall, I must say, what can you say? Mentally we were not at the level in the first half, you could see incidents of the Manchester United game here where we had the bad start. Overall we played too deep, too far from each other, but we were much more compact in the second half and after that we are even frustrated in the end because we were 3-2 up and could have won the game.”
Coach Liverpool Klopp on the result:
“The second half was not worse [than the first], we scored the second one – a wonderful, individual goal. On the whole, we had more chances, so yes, of course it feels not too cool. We had five minutes where we were very often had obvious problems and individual problems – all the goals. It’s not in this case [about] the team defending.
The first goal is why you should avoid crosses and of course when the ball is in the box it is at least 50-50, [but it was a] misjudgement obviously. [There was] misjudgement around the second goal. Third one, misjudgement – too deep, no offside, we let them go in the box and make it too easy.
Then, after these five minutes, we reacted then much better and deserved in the end the point. It’s the minimum that we deserved tonight. The result is not what we wanted, but the performance for 89 minutes was what we wanted. We played 94 minutes [with added time] and the five minutes were very decisive tonight and difficult to explain, but good to learn from because we need to react differently.
As individual players, we need to react differently in situations like this – you need to be much angrier than sad or disappointed. So we gave them [a chance], we opened the door for them in these five minutes and they, with all respect, took the chances. And then in this strange game, everybody probably thought first, ‘this is Liverpool’s night’ and then after these five minutes everybody thought ’now it’s Arsenal’s night.
We should have scored [more] and we all know that – we don’t have to talk too much about defense because it was not about the defense. Individually it is possible [to make mistakes], but usually not in one night. But we should have scored another four and that’s a big compliment to our team because coming here, playing this kind of football, creating these kind of chances is not easy, but we did it.”
