Arsenal 1 Liverpool 1
Martin Samuel,
Martin Samuel,
Chief Football Correspondent
The TIMES
There are close calls — the Democratic nomination, London’s mayoral election, Brown versus Cameron at the polls next time, perhaps — and then there is this match. Pick a winner if you dare. Try to put a cigarette paper between them. Advantage Liverpool? Not against the team who defeated AC Milan at the San Siro, surely. The clever money on Arsenal? Not if you have studied Liverpool’s form in Europe since Rafael Benítez took over.
Those who were expecting a first-leg stalemate were only half wrong. Both goals came in a three-minute spell and, for the remaining 87, two English teams playing Champions League football cancelled each other out. Sound familiar? The pleasant surprise was that this was no Liverpool-Chelsea snooze-fest, no exercise in tactical tedium and the crashing together of immovable objects. This match was open, enjoy-
able and bodes well for the spectacle at Anfield next Tuesday. Liverpool had the best of the first half, Arsenal the best of the second. Honours even, then, and credit all round.
If the Liverpool contingent went home satisfied and Arsenal aggrieved, it was because, in two incidents midway through the second half, the North London team could have scored a second goal. In the first instance they were kept out by stout defending, in the other by a referee’s oversight. No prizes for guessing which dominated the post-match conversation.
In the 65th minute, Martin Skrtel, the Liverpool centre half, blocked on the line from Emmanuel Eboué, which was fair enough; seconds later, however, Dirk Kuyt pulled back Alexander Hleb in the penalty area, which was not. Pieter Vink, the Dutch ref-eree, missed it, unlike the majority of the home crowd. To the delight of conspiracy theorists, it then emerged that Kuyt hails from Katwijk, Vink from Noordwijkerhout, towns in the Rijnland region in the west of the Netherlands separated by a distance of five miles. They will no doubt have a lot to talk about if they ever meet in the vegetable aisle at the local supermarket.
When Arsenal did score, after 23 minutes, it was another European goal for Emmanuel Adebayor, the man who could not find the net in this competition previously and now cannot stop. It was one of those new-fangled Arsenal goals, too, from a simple set-piece rather than the work of a thousand passes, but no less impressive for that. Robin van Persie took a short corner, which Cesc Fàbregas stopped dead, changing the angle fractionally. Van Persie whipped the ball in and Adebayor rose above Sami Hyypia to head past José Manuel Reina in the Liverpool goal.
It capped a brief period of Arsenal supremacy but did not last long. From the next attack of the game, Liverpool drew level, which minimalists will point out could be enough. Buoyed by an away goal — although this rule feels strange when teams are separated by regional accents rather than passport control — if Benítez can marshal his team to follow in the footsteps of Portsmouth, Slavia Prague, Wigan Athletic and Manchester United, Liverpool will be through. Perhaps he will contact the only four clubs to keep a clean sheet against Arsenal at home this season and ask them how they did it. It is worth noting, though, that in two of those matches, in Prague and at Old Trafford in the FA Cup, Wenger fielded a seriously understrength team.
It is a common complaint of a bemused Fabio Capello that England’s floundering players appear to have sublimely talented doppelgängers when they are in action for their clubs. At no point would this have been made clearer than in the 26th minute, when Steven Gerrard set up an equaliser that bore about as much resemblance to his international impact as Liverpool’s European form does to their domestic performances. It could not have come at a more crucial time, either, with Arsenal ahead only three minutes earlier and beginning to look dangerous.
The reverberations from the cheers that greeted Adebayor’s goal were still bouncing around the arena when Ryan Babel slipped the ball to Fernando Torres on the edge of the area. The Spaniard played in Gerrard, who, as he has done so many times for Liverpool in this competition, took it as a personal duty to restore his club to the match. He did not only run into the Arsenal penalty area, he drove, he gushed, he streamed, first past Eboué, then Kolo Touré, playing out of position at right back and reduced by it. Reaching the byline, Gerrard crossed and Kuyt outmuscled Philippe Senderos in the six-yard box to force the ball past Manuel Almunia, the Arsenal goalkeeper.
Kuyt is often a maligned figure at Anfield, one of the whipping boys when Benítez’s plans go awry, but Capello would approve of him. What he did here was what the England manager requires of his support striker — starting wide, but getting inside quickly to join, or go beyond, Torres — and it was his wit in that role that earned his sixth goal in Europe this season. No bad return for a supposed weak link.
With the match so tensely and delicately poised, light relief came from the unlikely figure of Benítez, whose reaction to the equaliser bordered on self-parody. Known for intensity at the best of times, as the bench leapt up in delight, Benítez remained stuck fast in his seat, rising only to march to the touchline and issue grim-faced, urgent instructions to his defensive midfield players. If anyone ever gets a smile out of the man during a match, he will probably invoice for it later.
Perhaps he will permit an upward tremor of the lips if Liverpool get the right result at Anfield on Tuesday. Do not bet on it, though; or on anything else for that matter.
Those who were expecting a first-leg stalemate were only half wrong. Both goals came in a three-minute spell and, for the remaining 87, two English teams playing Champions League football cancelled each other out. Sound familiar? The pleasant surprise was that this was no Liverpool-Chelsea snooze-fest, no exercise in tactical tedium and the crashing together of immovable objects. This match was open, enjoy-
able and bodes well for the spectacle at Anfield next Tuesday. Liverpool had the best of the first half, Arsenal the best of the second. Honours even, then, and credit all round.
If the Liverpool contingent went home satisfied and Arsenal aggrieved, it was because, in two incidents midway through the second half, the North London team could have scored a second goal. In the first instance they were kept out by stout defending, in the other by a referee’s oversight. No prizes for guessing which dominated the post-match conversation.
In the 65th minute, Martin Skrtel, the Liverpool centre half, blocked on the line from Emmanuel Eboué, which was fair enough; seconds later, however, Dirk Kuyt pulled back Alexander Hleb in the penalty area, which was not. Pieter Vink, the Dutch ref-eree, missed it, unlike the majority of the home crowd. To the delight of conspiracy theorists, it then emerged that Kuyt hails from Katwijk, Vink from Noordwijkerhout, towns in the Rijnland region in the west of the Netherlands separated by a distance of five miles. They will no doubt have a lot to talk about if they ever meet in the vegetable aisle at the local supermarket.
When Arsenal did score, after 23 minutes, it was another European goal for Emmanuel Adebayor, the man who could not find the net in this competition previously and now cannot stop. It was one of those new-fangled Arsenal goals, too, from a simple set-piece rather than the work of a thousand passes, but no less impressive for that. Robin van Persie took a short corner, which Cesc Fàbregas stopped dead, changing the angle fractionally. Van Persie whipped the ball in and Adebayor rose above Sami Hyypia to head past José Manuel Reina in the Liverpool goal.
It capped a brief period of Arsenal supremacy but did not last long. From the next attack of the game, Liverpool drew level, which minimalists will point out could be enough. Buoyed by an away goal — although this rule feels strange when teams are separated by regional accents rather than passport control — if Benítez can marshal his team to follow in the footsteps of Portsmouth, Slavia Prague, Wigan Athletic and Manchester United, Liverpool will be through. Perhaps he will contact the only four clubs to keep a clean sheet against Arsenal at home this season and ask them how they did it. It is worth noting, though, that in two of those matches, in Prague and at Old Trafford in the FA Cup, Wenger fielded a seriously understrength team.
It is a common complaint of a bemused Fabio Capello that England’s floundering players appear to have sublimely talented doppelgängers when they are in action for their clubs. At no point would this have been made clearer than in the 26th minute, when Steven Gerrard set up an equaliser that bore about as much resemblance to his international impact as Liverpool’s European form does to their domestic performances. It could not have come at a more crucial time, either, with Arsenal ahead only three minutes earlier and beginning to look dangerous.
The reverberations from the cheers that greeted Adebayor’s goal were still bouncing around the arena when Ryan Babel slipped the ball to Fernando Torres on the edge of the area. The Spaniard played in Gerrard, who, as he has done so many times for Liverpool in this competition, took it as a personal duty to restore his club to the match. He did not only run into the Arsenal penalty area, he drove, he gushed, he streamed, first past Eboué, then Kolo Touré, playing out of position at right back and reduced by it. Reaching the byline, Gerrard crossed and Kuyt outmuscled Philippe Senderos in the six-yard box to force the ball past Manuel Almunia, the Arsenal goalkeeper.
Kuyt is often a maligned figure at Anfield, one of the whipping boys when Benítez’s plans go awry, but Capello would approve of him. What he did here was what the England manager requires of his support striker — starting wide, but getting inside quickly to join, or go beyond, Torres — and it was his wit in that role that earned his sixth goal in Europe this season. No bad return for a supposed weak link.
With the match so tensely and delicately poised, light relief came from the unlikely figure of Benítez, whose reaction to the equaliser bordered on self-parody. Known for intensity at the best of times, as the bench leapt up in delight, Benítez remained stuck fast in his seat, rising only to march to the touchline and issue grim-faced, urgent instructions to his defensive midfield players. If anyone ever gets a smile out of the man during a match, he will probably invoice for it later.
Perhaps he will permit an upward tremor of the lips if Liverpool get the right result at Anfield on Tuesday. Do not bet on it, though; or on anything else for that matter.
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