Arsenal reduced reserves – Newspaper Kommersant No. 61 (7506) of 04/10/2023

The leader of the English Premier League (EPL) Arsenal in the 30th round, playing on the road with Liverpool, missed a two-goal advantage and achieved only a draw – 2:2. Thus, the gap between the Londoners and their closest pursuer Manchester City in terms of lost points was reduced to three points.

This trip was considered one of the most difficult tests for Arsenal in the April stretch of the road to its eventual title, which was seen more and more clearly with each last matchday. And so it happened. Even if Liverpool, one of the main losers of the current English championship, coming in eighth place, now bears little resemblance to the formidable football machine that, under the control of its current coach Jurgen Klopp, won the Champions League four years ago, and finished the following season by a huge margin first in the national championship.

At the end of the first 30 minutes, it seemed that Arsenal would be able to win an easy victory.

First, they scored an early goal that was born after a long combination of 14 accurate passes and an error by the home defense pillar Virgil van Dijk, who, in an attempt to intercept the ball, rolled it awkwardly in his own box to Gabriel Martinelli. Van Dijk was also directly related to the second goal of the Londoners, watching how Gabriel Jesus, with his height of only 175 cm, after a canopy from the left flank of the same Martinelli, in splendid isolation with a header, leaves no chance for goalkeeper Alisson. It was only after that that Liverpool’s pride jumped up and he really got down to business. At the end of the first half, right after Arsenal old-timer Granit Xhaka quarreled with Trent Alexander-Arnold and both received a yellow card, the hosts carried out an elegant pass in the opponent’s penalty area and brought their top scorer Mohamed Salah to the shot, who was ahead of someone else’s goalkeeper Aron Ramsdale.

After the break, Liverpool stepped up the pressure, and Arsenal got really hard.

Things went as far as a penalty awarded for an unintentional but clear violation of Rob Holding on Diogo Jote. Salah approached the penalty mark, but his left foot kick into the lower left corner turned out to be inaccurate. This did not discourage Liverpool, who continued to attack. The best player of the match Ramsdale now and then entered the game, and a quarter of an hour before the end of the meeting, miraculously won a duel against Darwin Nunez, who went one on one with him.

By that time, Arsenal were counting solely on counterattacks, which, however, were also very dangerous. The denouement came after Gabriel Jesus, inflicting a header from the goalkeeper’s line, missed a real chance to make a double. The payback for this generosity came within two minutes. Now it was Alexander-Arnold, who beat Alexander Zinchenko on the right flank, and headed Roberta Firmina. And the score was even.

In stoppage time, Ramsdale first bailed out from Salah’s shot, retrieving the ball from the top corner with his fingertips, and then again, when it seemed that nothing could save the guests. As a result – 2:2. Thus, the series of six victories won by Arsenal in the championship of England was interrupted, but more importantly, although at the moment the formal advantage of the Londoners over Manchester City has increased from five points to six, the main competitor has a match in hand .

And three points is not the gap with which you can feel calm with eight rounds to go, especially since on May 3 the two contenders for gold will play each other.

True, one nuance must be taken into account. For 12 days, from April 26 to May 7, Manchester City players will play four matches. At the same time, unlike Arsenal, they are fighting not even on two, but on three fronts. And if in the semi-finals of the FA Cup against Sheffield, which plays in the second English division, Pep Guardiola’s wards should not have any special problems, then in the quarter-finals of the Champions League they will face two difficult meetings with Bayern over the next two weeks. While Arsenal will purposefully prepare for the next league matches.

Evgeny Fedyakov