Arsenal 2- 0 Liverpool: Reds' lopsided pressing and Sagna’s overlaps stretch defensive trio

Arsenal vs Liverpool – Santiago Cazorla

Arsenal’s title contention this season was under serious doubts after their defeats against Dortmund and Chelsea, and with the Gunners facing Liverpool, United and again Dortmund in the same week, Wenger’s big match mentality was under a stern test.

Out of the above lot, Liverpool would have been considered the toughest opposition due to their exceedingly in-form strike partnership of Suarez and Sturridge. But a combination of indecisive pressing and lousy marking left Brendan Rodgers side second best against an Arsenal side that looked unusually strong defending with a high line against the pace of Sturridge and Suarez.

Pre-match injury woes left Liverpool without Glen Johnson and Arsenal without Wilshere and Flamini. Both managers retained their shapes, with Rodgers going for his usual 3-5-2 and Wenger for a 4-2-3-1. Rodgers’ choice of going with Flannagan at RWB and playing Henderson, who has played the role earlier, in midfield, clearly showed how important a trio of midfielders was against Arsenal. Wilshere’s absence left Wenger with not many choices and again Arteta looked set to be overloaded by the likes of Suarez and Coutinho later on.

The presence of 2 contrasting styles of defence was expected to be the talking point of the night, and the initial parts of the game turned out to be around the same lines. Liverpool’s 3 man defence saw the wingbacks push up and attack with aplomb, and in particular the LWB Cissokho often found loads of time and space to charge ahead.

This was also helped by the fact that Wenger didn’t have a single winger at his disposal, and both of his on-field wingers Rosicky and Ozil found much more space drifting in, often playing into Liverpool’s narrow defence.

Trio in defence stretched by Sagna and Giroud

But the point of difference between this game and all other Liverpool’s games with 3 at the back was Olivier Giroud’s style of play upfront for Arsenal. The French striker is normally seen to operate with his back to goal and win maximum number of headers against the Centre Back.

But here while facing one of the sturdiest defenders this season: Skrtel, Giroud was rarely winning any headers to flick-on, but was more crucially dragging out the Slovakian from the defensive line.

This left the Reds with just the 2 other CB’s and that too separated by a bigger gap in the centre. This saw the likes of Santi Cazorla, and more regularly Aaron Ramsey run into space through the centre of Liverpool’s defence, and the Gunners should definitely have finished better on many occasions.

The other more evident flaw in Rodger’s defensive setup was being exposed by the invigorated Bacary Sagna down the right flank. The Frenchman’s regular bursts saw Cissokho fall back deeper on the flank and give his entire attention to Sagna, and in-effect allow Rosicky all the space to drift in and attack Sakho directly.

This initially led to Rosicky getting a shot on goal when Giroud again pulled Skrtel out from the centre. On the occasion when Sagna got the better of Cissokho on the counter, his well-timed cross led to Cazorla’s goal.

Liverpool’s uncoordinated pressing allows Cazorla all the space

Apart from clear differences in the defencive setups of both teams, pressing by the midfield was another contrasting issue. Liverpool played with Jordan Henderson as the advanced midfielder, and he along with Gerrard and Lucas often looked to close Arsenal down high up the pitch. This led to the likes of Ramsey and Arteta being closed down by Henderson and Gerrard from midfield and Luiz Suarez from attack.

But putting it down to the current touches and temperament of Ramsey or Koscienly’s willingness to step out of the defence and act as an extra man, Arsenal were often able to negotiate their way out of Liverpool’s pressing in midfield. This is where the problem started for Rodgers, as none of his defenders was as proactive as the midfield trio in terms of pressing.

With Gerrard and co. pressing higher up the pitch, the defence lay back much deeper and tried to press only once the likes of Cazorla or Ozil received the ball in the huge space in between. This again led to the first goal when Sakho immaturely stepped up to close down an Arsenal man receiving ball in that space, and hence compromising his own defence line.

Rodgers changes to a 4-4-2 but surrenders midfield battle

Rodgers change of shape at half time saw Liverpool shift back to a 4 man defence as Coutinho came on for Cissokho. Rodgers was now playing a 4-4-2 with Henderson and Coutinho on the flanks, with either of the 2 alternating to drift in.

But this resulted in Liverpool essentially playing with 2 Central midfielders against Arsenal’s trio. The first half had seen the likes of Arteta sitting deep in his half, watching the runs of Suarez closely. But the mismatch of numbers in the 2nd half saw both Ramsey and Arteta shuttle ahead much more.

Though this did open up couple of chances for Suarez, but it made Gerrard and Lucas sit very deep in their half with absolutely no pressing. With pure intent of just closing down the space between the lines, the duo was able to press the likes of Ozil and Cazorla on the edge of the box, and rarely covered the likes of Ramsey running ahead.

One such move saw Gerrard and Lucas covering Ozil, and Henderson looking for his man Cazorla on the left, and an unmarked Rasmey stroll in and score a beauty from the edge of the box.

Aaron Ramsey

The substitutions for the rest of the game were purely reactive. Rodgers shifted Henderson to Right back by bringing Moses on for Flannagan. With Moses powering his way from the centre towards the right, Vermaelen who had come on for Gibbs now had his hands full.

So Henderson was getting a couple of chances to cross in dangerously from the right. So Wenger brought in Nacho Monreal for Rosicky just to stem down this attack. A similar move saw Jenkinson come in on the right to cut out Coutinho’s late threat.

The game was supposed to be dependent on the Sturridge-Suarez combo upfront, but Sturridge’s absurdly high positioning next to Mertersacker, and Arteta and Koscielny’s brilliant marking of Suarez reduced the threat majorly.

Arsenal were lacking the width on the flank to trouble a 3 man defence initially, but the loads of space given to Cazorla and Ozil in front of Liverpool’s defence proved to be the crucial woe for Rodgers.