Liverpool dealt a huge blow to Arsenal’s title hopes last season after coming from two goals down to draw with the Gunners at Anfield back in April.
Mikel Arteta’s side raced into a 2-0 lead inside half an hour at L4 and looked to have all three points secured but a goal just before half-time from Mo Salah and a spirited second half display from the Reds meant the spoils were shared.
Manchester City would of course go on to win the Premier League title for a third successive season and former City defender and current Arsenal star Oleksandr Zinchenko has revealed a conversation he had with Trent Alexander-Arnold in the tunnel after his side’s 2-2 draw on Merseyside with both players playing a role in Bobby Firmino’s equaliser in front of The Kop.
“Trent last season, about megs [putting the ball between his legs]. I spoke with him after the game in the tunnel,” the Ukrainian told Rio Ferdinand’s FIVE YouTube channel (via Rousing The Kop).
“He said ‘Alex, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t expect that I megs you. In the end I just put my head down and saw the ball is still with me and then after I realised that I megs you.’ I knew he was going to meg me! I knew! If you see the pictures, my knees were touching each other, I knew that’s the only way he could go through me.”
This game was the first time we witnessed Alexander-Arnold be deployed in his new inverted role.
For the first half an hour of the game Arsenal knocked the ball round far too easily and it felt like they were the home team.
After the break and a tactical tweak from Jurgen Klopp the Gunners struggled to contain us, however, and were fortunate to come away from the game with anything.
When we had possession of the ball our No. 66 moved into a central midfield role and was pulling the strings for those ahead of him.
It’s a position that he continued to operate in for the remainder of the campaign and it was therefore no surprise that we finished the season unbeaten in our final 11 games.
We’re expecting the Scouser to be deployed in a similar role this term as he can properly showcase his world-class passing ability and control the tempo of the game from the engine room.
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