There was a point in the first half at Anfield when Arsenal weren’t just playing the occasion but the time of year.
They ventured into the darkest woods of Andoni Iraola’s chaos-ball and let the spirits do their thing. Up was down, black was white. Florian Wirtz outmuscled Declan Rice. Bruno Guimaraes cleared the ball and howled like a wolf at the moon. The ball was slingshot from one penalty box to the other and Arsenal were out of control.
It was the game Iraola wanted and to be frank the game the Premier League needed. Manchester City’s Sham-City-pending-appeal hinterland has made their presence near the top of the table a ghostly apparition, threatening to undermine a 2026/27 campaign that cannot quite develop interesting stories in the shadow of the those charges.
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An electric Arsenal-Liverpool title race would help and for the first 45 minutes it looked like we would get one, complete with a new rivalry defined by furious attacking football and even more furious challenges from a set of players who seemed, inexplicably, to absolutely hate each other.
Within 150 seconds Trey Nyoni had twice made crunching orangey-yellow card fouls and from then on it was bitter, frantic, and truly absorbing in a way the Premier League has failed to be in the opening three months of the calendar. The question that loomed over it all was, well, why? Why had Arsenal, who saw control and order as a religious experience, let this happen?
Mikel Arteta must have been asking the same questions because the Arsenal that emerged after the break was completely different. Where Liverpool’s incessant crossing had dishevelled Arsenal’s defence, now the balls into the box were met by the familiar cluster of bodies. Where Arsenal’s reckless counter-attacks had stretched the pitch, now the visitors slowed things down at every opportunity.
Arsenal tamed the conditions, and despite some late Liverpool pressure they deservedly held on to end a 13-game winless streak at this ground. Great news for Arsenal fans, not so much for everyone else.
The champions are now three points clear at the top of the table but the way the supporters celebrated at the final whistle it was obvious they knew the real gap is far bigger. If we discount Man City and assume Brighton won’t sustain their form, Arsenal are already eight points clear of their nearest challengers, Chelsea, a team whose recent defeats to Brentford and Tottenham Hotspur tell us Xabi Alonso needs a year to sort out the mess.
Liverpool were the only realistic hope of a title battle and they are nine points behind, winning fewer than half their league matches under Iraola. For all the talk of their new-look front four, and despite an at-times confident performance this evening, Liverpool have a stringy, hectic quality. The ball bobbles and squirms away from players as they tumble forward, the mind outrunning the body, the fingers not yet fast enough to move between the heavy-metal chords.
Florian Wirtz began sharply but faded. Jeremy Jaquet was outstanding except for the enormous error he made in the build-up to Kai Havertz’s winner. The passing was brave and the press braver, but the cost, until Iraola’s patterns are perfected, is just too high.
When all is said and done Liverpool simply don’t have the qualities that defined Arsenal’s title win last year and their second 45 today: a brutal self-assurance that allows Arteta’s side to physically dominate, to bend time and space to their will.
Nobody else in this league has that, least of all Man City, whose back-to-back defeats reflect the sense of a narrative – an identity, even – slipping through their fingers in the courts.
Liverpool could rise to take their place, eventually. They will improve and have done already under Iraola, but not enough for today and not enough for this season. Arsenal already feel like champions.
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