Slot needed to change issues, so he pushed right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold into central midfield an increasing number of within the second half to present Liverpool an additional man in that space.
He additionally dropped his two central midfielders who had been working forward of Ryan Gravenberch – Curtis Jones and Alexis Mac Allister – deeper so Liverpool had extra choices once they performed out from the again. It was the identical when Dominik Szoboszlai changed Mac Allister for the ultimate half hour, too.
On the similar time, when Gabriel went off injured, Arsenal adjusted and dropped off moderately than persevering with to press, and it felt like they had been attempting to guard their lead as a substitute of trying to rating extra targets.
That modified the form of the sport, however Liverpool nonetheless needed to be cautious of the Gunner’s menace on the counter – and tried to steadiness that with pushing for an equaliser.
In opposition to the so-called lesser groups, you may go away one-on-one conditions throughout your backline, however Arsenal’s gamers within the excessive positions are a few of the greatest on this planet and able to beating folks individually very simply, as we noticed with Saka’s aim.
With all that in thoughts, Liverpool’s plan was to attempt to hold maintain of the ball longer and hope the Arsenal gamers would swap off to permit them alternatives, with out leaving themselves open on the similar time.
However, once more, you return to the very fact the Gunners are a prime crew defensively too. We’ve seen already this season how good their focus is – in opposition to Manchester Metropolis with 10 males, for instance – they usually do not typically make the type of errors to let the opposition in.
Whereas Liverpool had plenty of possession after the break – 63% – they didn’t essentially have a lot of it in harmful areas. Loads of it was in the course of the pitch, the place Arsenal had been camped, they usually had been pleased for Liverpool to mess around them and go backward and forward.
In the long run, Arsenal solely left themselves open a few instances, and one in all them was for the prospect that Liverpool made it 2-2 from.
