IT'S May 1989 and Arsenal have sealed the league title at Anfield via Michael Thomas’s late goal. George Graham’s team needed an unlikely win by two goals and they got one. “It’s up for…”, you know the rest. Arguably the greatest single moment in the London club’s history, and, though a host of teams, Arsenal included, have moved grounds since the 1980s, Anfield remains where it always was. Spruced up, yes, but that spot where Thomas forward-rolled is still there; a ley line of English football history.
But extracting such glory from a single geolocation exacts a heavy price and although Arsenal’s first-ever Premier League win came at Anfield, their record there has largely been a torrid one ever since (with a brief upsurge in the High-Wenger era, and another in the Long-Decline era). Games between the clubs in the mid-1990s were the domain of street magician Robbie Fowler, who, in 1994, scored what was then the fastest ever Premier League hat-trick in four minutes and 33 seconds.
fowler fastest premership hat trick: http://t.co/qAUs5Xbbpd 20 years ago today @Robbie9Fowler did what he did best. #gorobbiegorobbiego
— C10 ROU (@RedRou) August 28, 2014
A season later and he scored another, albeit slower, treble in a 3-1 win, that lone Arsenal goal their only effort at Anfield in eight trips there. All the while Michael Thomas looked on with glee, the hero of ’89 now, somehow, a Liverpool player. Between 1993 and 2007, Arsenal avoided defeat at Anfield only five times in 14 trips but managed to add three league titles to their honours list, something Liverpool, to be fair, haven’t done since Robbie Fowler was at school.
Andrey Arshavin’s four goals from four shots in the breathless 4-4 draw in 2009 (the only time a player has scored four times in a Premier League game and not ended on the winning side), came in a six-game unbeaten run for the London side at Anfield, but in February 2014 something significant shifted. It’s easy to look back at Liverpool’s raucous 5-1 win and extrapolate forward to May when Brendan Rodgers’ team came so close to ending the club’s title drought but it’s often overlooked that Arsenal were top when they arrived at Anfield that day. At that point the title race was a three-way between Wenger’s team, Chelsea and eventual winners Manchester City; it was the romp at Anfield that propelled Liverpool into the race.
Liverpool's last 5 results against Arsenal ⬇️ #Liverpoolfc
✔| 3 wins
➖| 2 draws
GS| 16
GC| 6 pic.twitter.com/Kf5dhhRsoW— Anything Liverpool (@AnythingLFC_) August 20, 2019
From that day onward, Arsenal’s results at Anfield have been 1-5, 2-2, 3-3, 0-4 and 1-5. Twenty-two goals in total conceded in six games, their leakiest spell away to a specific club since trips to Wolves in the 1950s and early 1960s. Hopes were high last season that under Unai Emery, Arsenal would rediscover their resolve but once again, they were undone by a torrid opening 45 minutes. As the numbers below show, Liverpool’s recent hex over Arsenal has been built on marauding, ferocious first halves. Jurgen Klopp does not unleash his press as often as he used to, but when Arsenal arrive at Anfield the dogs of war are unleashed.
Last season Liverpool matched the February 2014 game by scoring four times before half-time, their xG of 2.8 even higher than the 2.4 Rodgers’ team mustered in February 2014. The closest Arsenal have come to taming Liverpool in this era was in January 2016 when they absolutely dominated the opening half (1.6 to 0.3 on xG) yet still went in 2-2 at the break. The game, early in the Klopp era, ended 3-3 after a late Joe Allen equaliser, one of a series of dropped points that cost Wenger his last chance of adding a fourth Premier League title.
So to 2019-20, where Liverpool have already scored four first-half goals in their only Premier League game at Anfield so far, and where they boast an unbeaten run stretching back to the 2016-17 season. They face an Arsenal team who are the only other side to win their opening two games (this is the first time that both Liverpool and Arsenal have started with six points from six since 1990) and a nation salivates, waiting for the fixture that actually embodies the Premier League’s hard-earned reputation as an all-action high-glamour bun-fight.
Arsenal now theoretically have a front three that can go toe-to-toe with Liverpool’s, and Dani Ceballos could offer guile from midfield missing in the club’s recent trips to Anfield. Roberto Firmino, meanwhile, is stood quietly in the centre circle. Smiling, waiting, poised. Maybe it will be a cagey opening half and the teams will go in at 0-0 but if we can’t dream ahead of Liverpool vs Arsenal, just when can we?
