Result: Liverpool 0-0 Arsenal (Arsenal win 5-4 on penalties)
Competition: Carabao Cup
Date: 1 October 2020
Venue: Anfield
Starting lineup: Leno, Cedric, Holding, Gabriel, Kolasinac, Ceballos, Willock, Xhaka, Pepe, Nketiah, Saka
Subs: Runarsson, David Luiz, Tierney, Elneny, Maitland-Niles, Nelson, Lacazette
Arsenal progressed to the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup beating Liverpool 5-4 on penalties after a drab 0-0 draw at Anfield.
Joe Willock scored the winner from the spot after Bernd Leno denied Divock Origi and Harry Wilson.
The Gunners started and ended the game brightly but were kept in the game by man-of-the-match Leno who made a series of fine stops either side of the break.
It’s the second time we’ve beaten Klopp’s men in a shootout this season after securing the Community Shield at Wembley by the same scoreline.
Pre-game
Mikel Arteta made eight changes from the side that lost to Liverpool on Monday. Despite most people expecting Runarsson to make his debut, we stuck with Leno in goal, while Holding and Xhaka also retained their places. Given reports of an impending move to Bayer Leverkusen, it was something of a surprise to see Kolasinac starting the game on the left of defence. He was joined in the backline by the returning Gabriel. Cedric, back from injury, and Saka were on the flanks. Ceballos and Xhaka made for an experienced midfield pairing and Willock, Pepe and Nketiah were given the responsibility of leading the attack. There was no place on the bench for Mesut Ozil or Matteo Guendouzi. Or Aubameyang.
First half
Having been under the cosh throughout the opening 45 minutes on Monday, this game had a very different feel from the off. Arsenal started brightly, working the ball nicely between the lines and generally looked the more confident and lively side.
On 8 minutes a lovely pass by Xhaka freed Pepe on the left wing, the Ivorian darted inside, cut back to Willock and Nketiah really should have scored. Instead, he got the ball stuck under his feet, Adrian pounced and Cedric made a hash of his effort when the rebound fell to him. In retrospect, it was probably our best chance of the half.
We looked ‘interesting’ in possession – a well-worked training ground free-kick routine caught the eye – but too often we lacked composure in the final third. A few crisp passes built momentum which was quickly lost by a misjudged pass or poor touch.
In fairness, Liverpool don’t make it easy and while they weren’t pressing with the same guile as earlier in the week, you need to be at your best to pick the lock. Especially with Van Dijk marshalling things in the centre of defence.
Our main tactic seemed to involve overloading the left flank and targeting youngster Nico Williams. That meant Kolasinac, Saka and Pepe all getting involved high up the pitch. The latter was the target of several lofted balls; a tactic that might have worked better with more quality from engineers Ceballos and Xhaka.
Slowly but surely, Liverpool grew in confidence and we grew sloppier trying to play out from the back. Kolasinac nearly got us into trouble on one occasion and Ceballos came close to conceding a penalty on Jota when he hauled down the Portuguese on the edge of the box after faffing about with a Cedric throw-in. That aside, we looked pretty organised at the back.
Only a fine stop by Leno – who denied Jota’s header at full stretch – and a bad finish by Minamino – who hit the bar when the rebound fell to him – stopped us from falling behind just before the break.
Second half
Liverpool continued to have the better of things and three times came close to scoring before the hour mark. On 53 minutes, Leno made another fine save, this time getting down low to claw away a Van Dijk close-range prod. Three minutes later Jota threatened with an effort from 18-yards that flicked off Holding for a corner. Grujic forced Leno into more action with a low drive.
By this point, we were really struggling to keep the ball for any period of time so it was a real relief to see Salah and Van Dijk replaced by Gomez and Origi.
It didn’t make much difference. Twice more Leno was called into action. First, he denied Jota, who had beaten Kolasinac for pace to burst through the middle, then, from the resulting corner, he tipped away a Grujic header.
In a rare attack, Holding, up for a corner, came close with a header of his own. The centre-back climbed well to meet a Pepe cross but couldn’t beat Adrian. Nketiah also tried his luck with a header but his connection with a Willock cross was timid. The striker was subbed fro Lacazette with 10 minutes remaining.
Pepe endured a particularly frustrating evening. Quite often he found himself in decent positions but almost every time he got on the ball he failed to make any real headway. Being kind, he looked short of confidence. Being harsh, he was pants.
In stoppage time, we had a big claim for a penalty when Milner, falling to the ground, touched the ball in the area. Our players appealed, too vociferously in Cedric’s case because he was booked, but Kevin Friend ignored the desperate cries and waved play on.
As was the case in the Community Shield, the game went to penalties.
The shootout
Milner. Goal. Lacazette. Goal. Wijnaldum. Goal. Cedric. Goal. Minamino. Goal. Elneny. Saved by Adrian. Origi. Saved by Leno. Maitland-Niles. Goal. Jones. Goal. Pepe. Goal. Wilson. Saved by Leno. Willock. Goal. Just.
So Arsenal win 5-4 on penalties and progress to the quarter-finals. The draw for that takes place later this evening.
Thank god for Leno.
Martinez would’ve gone on a mazy run from his own penalty area, bamboozling the whole of the Liverpool team, before sitting Adrian down, dribbling past him and nudging the ball over the line with his bum, thus negating the need for a penalty shoot out in the first place.
Lmao! There was a cartoon called Hurricanes back in the day about a football team and in one episode their goal keeper did just that! ?
Oh God, the “game caller” on that show was so cringey.
And thank god for Adrian (last peno)
Yeah , can we finish with the “wrong keeper sold” now?
Dennis was on our side tonight, that’s for sure..
Thank god for Leno, for shutting up stupid reactionary fans.
Great win..
Yes! By the time that shootout was over, I was really into this game! Especially since I thought it was all over when Elneny missed. Then Origi takes the exact same penalty! Let’s goooo!
Thought Elnenys attempt at a dumby run up was v obvious. Lenos save was the better one. Coyg
Revenge – good performance and penalty conclusion.
Klopp really wanted it but Arteta has a much better record against him ?
Leicester, Liverpool, who next?
Stoke?
ManCity … holders. Rats!
Yes, of sorts but the PL is still a teeny weeny bit bigger competition isn’t it. The cup is one of our trophy targets this season so we’ve done very well tonight. I’m sure Liverpool and Klopp will be disappointed of course, but not desperately concerned.
No loss feels good, even in a Sunday league.
90 minutes commentary of hearing how amazing Curtis Jones is and Jamie Carragher repeatedly saying ‘Kolasan-itch’ pays off
I do not like Curtis Jones.
Agreed. He’s a right Billy Big Bollocks, having done nothing in the game so far. It’s amazing how good players think they are when they get to play for a great manager.
A perfectly punchable face. I mean, he’s still young so I should probably lay off but ugh early signs suggest he’s a real asshole
I love this one … 🙂
feels a bit like a young Joey Baton
r*
Carragher that cunt. Can’t stand his and Owen’s commentary. ?
Hope Carra does not clear his throat and spit on you.
And that kids is the story of how Leno slayed all his doubters and haters
Couldn’t have come at a better time. He had a good penalty record in the Bundesliga. Glad he’s finally showing signs of it
Maitland Niles is RIDICULOUSLY cool.
Confidence level – Bendtner
Probably more skill to back it up though tbh
Confidence is good (not that B52 was good – he was ok), ego like Ade doesn’t help.
God like
Cooler than a polar bears toe nails!
Different gravy that lad.
When he was starting his run up I took a big gamble and said to my Gooner wife “and here he his Maitland Niles the coolest player in the world”…he did not let me down! 🙂
The cool smile afterwards. I think that undid Adrian.
As cold as a witch’s tit.
Watching AMN take a penalty is truly delightful.
Pepe too embarrassed Adrian. And then left with a cheeky smile
AMN, coolest dude in town.
Ainsley is such a sneaky little mister. That smile!
bit lucky but well worked by everyone. Cedric looked decent
V assured
I thought he had a good game
Definitely a divisive topic, but Cedric was perfectly adequate
We had a chance in the last 10 mins when Pepe was through on goal and linesman called offsidr. Did not look offside in the replays. Not to mention the penalty. Well deserved win with Leno smashing a MOTM performance.
Crap 1st half, decent 2nd
Still a stupid / corrupt signing
Have to agree, everyone dismissing him and praising Bellerin despite some real dodgy performances. Hopefully tonight’s game sheds some light in those who doubt his ability.
It was nice to have one of our right backs finally whipping dangerous balls from deep. That’s something I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hector do
Yeah, I don’t think Bellerin has the technique for it, unfortunately. He’s actually quite a limited player, although of course he has some big strengths too.
Leno MOTM, he was amazing as he usually is/was before his injury.
Liverpool are shit
Leno you brilliant wizard. This was the display I wanted to see.
Also Liverpool are bloody cheats, since when was tackling with your hand permissible as an out field player
I was annoyed Minamino didn’t get red carded for the number of fouls he racked up after the yellow.
It was unbelievable. The ref fell asleep after the half-time whistle it seems
This is why I feel rather ok about VAR. It’s quite tough to accept dumb ref decision time after time.
Yessssssss!!! Leno Leno Leno Man of the match.
Leno > Martinez
In Arteta we trust.
Hope now we get a home and easy draw.
We ended Liverpool home run.
Or Leno < Martinez, or Leno = Martinez, or whatever
Doesn’t matter much anymore. It’s the win that matters
Leno == Martinez && Leno !== Martinez
Well we got a home draw but it’s the holders unfortunately.
Very enjoyable for a 0-0 game
Liverpool had the better chances, but there were moments when you could catch glimpses of the side Arteta is building
Leno MOTM for me, even before the penalty saves
We should have had a clear penalty. Miller hand ball.
OK, we had 7
If they call that penalty against us, we’d be furious. It wasn’t a penalty.
Agree!
Feel like Willock could be an important asset for us going forward!
Yeah, Willock has such great assets as a player but he can be absolutely invisible in some games — I hope Arteta makes him a priority this season, as we really, really need another home-grown box-to-box midfielder in the ranks. Would be sweet.
I’ve noticed that Willock has extremely high energy levels. He was still pressing at full sprints in the 85th minute.
It’s also great that he finished this shootout especially after the heartbreak of last season cup fixture against Liverpool
He has one of the highest upsides of the young guys. Perhaps behind only Saka. Just needs that technical improvement and consistency. Big fan.
He needs to perform closer to his top lvl through out the games, if he does he’s the type of player that can dominate and dictate a midfield, I can understand why we have patience with him
EMS is more of a B2B I think.
Willock, just like Nelson need to work their socks off start to end when playin, Harder then their more senior rivals. That is what got Eddie into starting line ups. Saka works hard as well but also is the most effective of all our young guns, his read of the game and decisioning is absolutely top class
Knew he would go with strong squad. But would have loved to see a change in formation and bit of experiment, but maybe in the next round.
Well pleased but Nicolas Tépid….
Is there no VAR in these games?
No, apparently not Daveo.
Not sure I miss var, even with that clear penalty appeal we had.
AMN hands down coolest penalty taker ever.
Bloody awful game but thankfully we got through.
The lack of creativity in this team is embarrassing: nobody in our midfield deserves a single point. Pepe in particular was dreadful. Thank goodness we can defend: at least we stopped them from playing.
Leno was MOTM: he kept us in it in the second half.
Please buy a couple of midfielders before the window closes, Arteta!
A goodly evening to you too Fats.
Yeah, yeah, welcome back fatso. Not sure anybody particularly liked the ‘nice’ guy thats been standing in for you recently?
Don’t normally like to criticize refs, but he was a bit shit tonight.
I couldn’t agree more…
Why do you not like to criticize refs?
I would like to have the job of controlling the PA, and after a dodgy call, wail the boos out at about 120 decibels. Kevin seemed to be a friend of Pool’s tonight.
It’s cool that there’s no VAR in the Carabao, these games feel a bit old-school, but I wonder if these ref’s realise how inept and foolish they look botching a clear penalty decision and then booking a player who complains about it?
The Refs have Friends in high places
Sadly, with no scrutiny, they honestly don’t care … Imagine if we’d had Mike Dean today. Sheesh …
Mike Dean would have awarded a penalty to sp*rs and then sent off for dissent anyone who pointed out that they weren’t playing.
We’ve got to get past this idea that a 0-0 draw is automatically “drab”. The very next sentences blatantly contradict the suggestion that it was boring at all, given that we “started and ended brightly” and Leno kept us in it with several great saves.
Despite the bright start and end, it was most definately a drab game of football!
If one side starts brightly and ends brightly, and the other has so many chances that only the keeper keeps their opponent in it, then there were obviously lots of chances and attacking play. Therefore, not drab.
If a couple of the chances at either end had gone in, we’d be talking about a 5-goal thriller.
Well it was drab because we stopped them from playing their usual high octane football, unlike Monday.You dont really want to play a ‘lively’ game with Liverpool, given the huge difference between us in evolution as a team, they’ll play us off the park, so a little tactical guile was needed to even the odds.?
True I remember a quote that “The perfect game will end 0-0”.
If we can put in performances like that at difficult away games against the top 6. It would be a good place to build from.
No shame in it. That’s how City beat Liverpool to the title in 2018-2019.
who is that quote by that you remember so well?
did you even watch city that season? have a look at the stats and stop talking tripe
Where’s the “we sold the wrong keeper” brigade?
Radio silence.
Despite his brilliant saves he also made a few gaffes and we were lucky to get away with it. We sold the wrong keeper
He’s not that good in the air, if I’m being objective, but that’s nothing I’m sure he’s not already working on with Inaki Pavon.
We didn’t sell the wrong keeper because there was a 20 million bid for only one of them. Too much money to refuse. And the player wanted to leave to.
I’d rather talk about how Gabriel should’ve started Monday night and not Luiz. We looked far more assured.
Too*
We didn’t play Liverpool reserves on Monday, so not difficult to look more assured, to be fair. I agree all the same though. Personally I thought Luiz set the tone for the horribly slow passing out from the back in that game.
luiz is a problem when he plays cos he takes too long on the ball . hopefully he wont play many more games
could have been 1-0 down cos he palmed it straight out again.
You write this comment within about an hour of the final whistle. Maybe a tad hasty?
I’m perfectly aware that my opinion could easily be very wrong, but I think Martinez looked the better keeper over the past year. I would have liked to go with him as #1. My opinion, obviously, won’t change because of one good Leno performance, because I already thought Leno was good.
Why turn it into one side vs another? Why can’t we just have different opinions about certain players?
1. All those “Arsenal-sold-the-wrong-keeper” brigade have been silenced for good.
2. Arteta made a grievous mistake in picking Kolasinac; there is no way Leverkusen are going to pay £11m for him after that show!
3. Arsenal has to admit Pepe is a bad deal. That guy is out of his depth.
I liked Martinez a lot but he is not an arsenal player anymore, can’t understand why peps don’t get behind Leno, who has done enough to deserve total backing from us. He gave a Great reminder tonite
I can somehow understand it. Martinez was our boy, stood at the club for a long time and finally got his chance and grabbed it with both hands, and did superbly and was an important piece as to why we won the F.A. cup. It was kinda a cinderella story, and he was amazing. However, Leno has done it for the longer time, and he is amazing as well. We sold Martinez, Leno is still with us, let’s respect that and support him. I’ll still support Emi because he was great for us, but he is no longer with us… Read more »
It is one thing to like a player we sold, Martinez deserves nothing less, but to let that boil over to disrespect someone with the record Leno has is not ok, doesn’t make sense.
Totally agree with you, it makes no sense and we should support Leno, who has been nothing short of amazing for us in all this times
I actually thought this was one of Kolasinac’s better games. In any case, I hope I never see him in an Arsenal shirt again.
dont judge pepe ? . The same happened with AMN before the turn around
We kicked pool out of the competition, not to bad for a Tuesday in early October. There is a different belief in the team now, especially evident in the penalty shoot out, confidence and tiger eyes has replaced the don’t really want to be here body language pre-arteta era.
Thursday lol
I’ve said it before, but Ainsley reminds me so much of my old Jamaican mate, George, who really taught me so much about West Indian music. I could almost hear Bob Marley singing ‘I shot The Sheriff’ as he ambled and grooved up to the penalty spot. Wham, bam, thank ya man!!
This is a bizarre and fantastic comment
I didn’t think pepe was bad
He just lacks end product. I’m just waiting for him to release his handbrake!
Actually Pepe was mostly good with everything else but boy his end product was so bad. Also he hangs into the ball too much at times.
I thought Gervinho was great tonight, Andre Santos not so much.
Hopefully we’ll play better in the next game.. Happy we got through though
We had more to lose by losing than they had so it’s a very satisfactory result. We have the three cups as realistic targets this season (probably not all three, but you never know) so we’ve made some progress in one. Let’s keep it up and also do as well as possible in the PL.
Thought Gabriel was flawless. Holding excellent too
Buttt… we played like relegation scrappers against a line up that didn’t warrant that kind of respect. With our 1st choice midfield too. All our midfielders are just so slow they can’t press with the rest of the team without massively exposing themselves, so opposition can dominate possession and advance into the final 3rd with ease.
The extent to which we upgrade our midfield in the next few will be the most important factor between getting CL football and not. As it stands we’ll be 5-8th again
Let’s let Maitland Niles take all our penalties, I enjoyed his take more than he did.
If Saliba can’t make a Crapabao Cup bench should we be worried?
No
I said it would be a laugh if we knocked Liverpool out.
And it is! ????
Where’s nelson?
Leno is the best keeper???
Can we buy Marko Grujić? 🙂
Always good to beat Liverpool, even in a five aside.
Not convincing but satusfying to edge them out with a iffy penalty by Willock that once again painfully just edges them out of a cup… But we have Leno to thank for it. Clearly a justified decision to keep him over Martinez albeit still a fan of the Argentine. We were laborious today and poor closing down their crosses. We were static and zonal allowing them to move off of our players. The couple of good saves by Leno stemmed from them having time on the ball (courtesy of Saka) to cross diagonally into Jota on the left side of… Read more »
Pepe and Willock not great yet.