Arsenal 0-2 Liverpool: 2 positive signs of team progress

Arsenal lost. That’s the bottom line. Regardless of the opposition or the performance, the end result is that one team left with nothing.

As is so often stated, these matches aren’t the ones that will define the season. For a side like Arsenal – one of 18 or 17 teams who are light years away from Liverpool and Manchester City’s superiority – how they fare elsewhere will determine their fate.

That includes Aston Villa, which is a match that has all the potential to be a banana skin for Arsenal due to the home side’s upturn in form and the short turnover time before the lunchtime kick-off in Birmingham.

But with focus on the 2-0 defeat on Wednesday night, even if the expectation levels were low heading into the game it doesn’t prevent it from being tough to take. The fact that Arsenal more than matched their opponents extends the sorrow that little while longer.

Arsenal 0-2 Liverpool: There were two signs of team progress from Mikel Arteta’s side despite another Premier League defeat to Klopp’s men

This wasn’t just Arsenal going toe-to-toe with the Reds, this was them competing. For 50 or so minutes they were the better team, even if neither goal was being put under severe threat up until that point.

As Arteta pointed out post-match, this game was won and lost in the penalty boxes. Arsenal weren’t ruthless enough in Liverpool’s, or switched on enough in their own. Everything else that happened was hugely commendable against this calibre of team and the fact it was competitive for so long is a tangible sign of progress.

So too was the way Liverpool set themselves up. At half-time it was always felt they could step it up a gear, yet until they scored they were largely second best. What they did do was show huge respect to Arsenal. It is very rare that Liverpool will ever focus more on nullifying their opponents’ strengths as opposed to accentuating their own.

This was a team worried about Thomas Partey and Martin Odegaard, and who sacrificed elements of their approach to limit Arsenal. When as the last time Liverpool came to the Emirates and didn’t take the game to them from the first minute? It would be defensive lapses that would cost Arsenal in the end, not Liverpool turning the screw to such a degree that the Gunners suffocated.

They are still a magnificent side, of course, and more cynical onlookers would credit everything they did to a specific gameplan, but Jurgen Klopp making a double substitution seven minutes into the second half would suggest otherwise. He didn’t like what he was seeing, and for a side chasing the Premier League title with three points being essential to their goals, it’s little surprise.

And what do Arsenal have to show for all of this? Nothing. Nothing physical, at least, but plenty psychologically that they can build on even more than they have already this season.

Whether one is content with the size of the steps forward, to claim that this team isn’t bridging the gap would be nonsense. Strides are being taken even if it’s now over 10 hours of football since they scored against Liverpool. Whereas previously it was easier to see the gap widening, now it’s clear that it is narrowing.

When the youngest side in the division can play with a maturity and confidence against the fourth oldest side in the division, one that has been together for years, lives and breathes this style of football and has trophies to show for it, it’s disingenuous not to see the positives.

It’s a performance to ponder only briefly, though. Saturday is the biggest game of the season now.