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Arsenal must turn in to the hunters rather than the hunted this season

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo I watched almost all of the Liverpool v Man City game in a state of shock and surprise. You could see the visible embodiment of confidence and a lack thereof with the two teams on display. For that first half Liverpool completely dominated City, who looked shell-shocked, with some of the stats that popped up demonstrating that dominance (no shots from City, losing on possession and passing stats, etc). I know that City have been missing a few players with injury and Liverpool have practically a full compliment in their team, but this looked nothing like the City we have all come to know and hate.

And I reflected on that word I have used for most of this season: momentum. Liverpool have had all of it all season and City have lost any of it that they built up before this current barren streak.

And I started to think about us and the way that we’ve played in the three games since the international break. 13 goals, swagger is back, moving the ball quickly, showing incision and passing range; there’s a purpose and drive about this Arsenal team and it couldn’t have come at a better time. That’s because Liverpool look like they are showing no signs of wavering and with a third of the season gone, they are looking like they are very much in the driving seat.

Just like us two season’s back. I’ve just looked at the table when we were duking it out with City that season and we were on 34 points, 31 scored, 11 conceded, 11 wins, one draw and one defeat. Liverpool currently sit top of the league having won 11, drawn one and lost once. They’ve scored 26 and just conceded eight.

We had kicked on two season’s ago and everything went our way; we have very few injuries, we were able to play Gabriel Jesus as our main man right up until the World Cup and we were in great form. This Liverpool team have been able to keep their best players available, they are winning game after game and it feels very much like they’re doing what we are doing. But we all know what happened with us when we lost Gabriel Jesus to injury, then also Saliba and Tomiyasu as the season reached it’s run in – injuries hit us and it derailed us. We have to hope that Liverpool get the same fate at some stage this season.

The saving grace if you’re an Arsenal fan is that we all know that our form wasn’t sustainable for a whole season. We got hunted down by Man City and their relentlessness caught up with us eventually, beating us by five points and a significantly better goal difference.

This time, if we’re going to get close to hunting Liverpool down, we’re going to need to be the ones hunting them. City don’t look like a team who is going to hunt down anyone right now, so it might have to be use that does it, which means the margin for error is basically zero right now. Two season’s ago City chased us from the first couple of matches to the last before they eventually overtook us. At this stage in the season they were only two points behind us back then, whereas Liverpool have a nine point cushion. It already feels like we have a mountain to climb. But we’re going to have to do it sharpish.

That means we start with Man United on Wednesday night. They have suddenly found a bit of form with the ol’ ‘new manager bounce’ and Amorim has overseen two victories and a draw since taking charge. They absolutely whacked Everton yesterday, but also lost a few players due to yellow cards, who won’t be playing against us. Lisandro Martinez will serve a one game suspension, as will Kobbie Mainoo, so hopefully that gives us a bit of an advantage against a side who we always have a tough game. Sure they’ve been pretty bad at times this season, but Amorim is a smart bloke and he’ll be well aware of Arsenal and our qualities. His Sporting team dumped us out of the Europa League two season’s ago. He will have also have started to formulate a game plan for us whilst at Sporting this season; he may have been gone by the time it came to us playing them, but the tactics and set up will have a familiar look about it for United as it had when we played Sporting last week. More on that tomorrow and Wednesday as team news starts to tick in. For today, I’m looking at that table and thinking how we need to become the Man City of past season’s, by chasing down what looks to be a very confident Liverpool side.

Again, if we’re looking at a ‘glass half full’ perspective as Arsenal fans, we can say that we’ve tended to be better when chasing titles, historically I mean. If you believe in things like the ‘DNA’ of a club, look at what we did in 2004. We were chasing Chelsea and then United until match week 21 where we were up to 22 games before we took the top spot. We all know what eventually happened from there and we did a little less chasing than in 1998, where we were basically chasing United right up until the end when we overtook them with a few games to go. That’s what it feels like we’re going to have to do to Liverpool this season. we’re going to have to just keep on winning football match after football match. Hopefully the lack of travel time between now and the new year will help; Jorginho was asked about this in the aftermath of the West Ham game and said ‘it might help‘, although I’m not sure how much of a difference it will really make. We’ll have to see because I’m not sure how much of a marginal gain that actually is.

Right, that’s me done for today, so I’ll catch you all tomorrow as we look ahead to the Mancs coming to town.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.