Premier League: Liverpool 2 – 2 Arsenal
In a city where football is religion and Anfield is its Church, the air was thick with occasion. The sun cast golden strokes upon the red sea of scarves and passion, and the anthem—You know that anthem—rippled through the Mersey wind like a hymn for the saints of the Shankly parish. Liverpool, crowned again. Arsenal, with hope still flickering, arrived not just to compete, but to confront a history—a haunt—that has so often robbed them of joy.
And how it began—how typically it began. With noise, with nerve, with nostalgia. Arsenal, ever the elegant visitor, carved out a moment of early menace. From the left, a set-piece, familiar territory, a memory of past precision. Yet, in the moment where dreams take root, Bukayo Saka ghosted at the far post—free, a phantom in the chaos. He met the ball, met the moment, and then… squandered it. A warning shot fired across Merseyside bows. Arsenal were here. But so were Liverpool. Very much so.
For it took but a breath for the red tide to rise.
The Ghosts of Anfield Return
Curtis Jones—a player of subtle silk—threaded a needle through Arsenal’s high defensive line, where Salah lurked with the patience of a hunter. A cut-back. Diaz. Raya. A chance spurned—but not forgotten. It was the kiss that woke the dragon.
From then, the game became a thrum of pulse and panic. Tetchy, bitty, filled with niggle and nudge. A half-chance here, a misfire there. Arsenal, with three artisans—Trossard, Ødegaard, Partey—failing to paint a single clear stroke in the box after a Liverpool error. A moment lost to indecision.
And then—Anfield surged.
One ball. Just one. And the house of red ripped through Arsenal’s ribcage. Cody Gakpo denied, but only just. Arsenal failed to reset, like a record skipping back to the wrong verse. A throw-in, innocuous and innocent—until it wasn’t. Gakpo, again. No mistake. A rasping drive at the near post. And as Arsenal looked up from the grass, they found themselves peering into a yawning void.
They barely had time to comprehend it before a second—a sucker-punch of surgical cruelty. A lofted pass, Raya rushing, hesitation personified, Szoboszlai with composure, and Diaz—Luis Diaz—finishing with the finality of a guillotine.
Two minutes. Two goals. Arsenal, undone like threads pulled from a frayed sleeve.
And so the ghosts returned. Those Anfield memories of old—of 4-0s and 5-1s—crept into the visitors’ bones. 25 minutes gone, and Arsenal were not competing; they were surviving. Against the ropes, no longer swinging, just absorbing the blows. If progress has a cruel irony, it’s that now these capitulations arrive in May, not February. Winter has become spring, but the sting remains.
The officiating? Ah, the theatre within the theatre.
Mikel Merino—Arsenal’s enforcer—twice felled by yellow challenges. Yet the cards stayed buried in the referee’s pocket. But when the Spaniard returned the favour with a overzealous nudge, out came yellow, like thunder for a drizzle. The Kop roared. Anfield whispered in the referee’s ear. And the game tilted, tilted, tilted.
Half-time beckoned, and with it, irony. The heat of the afternoon had settled, the crowd sated. Jamie Carragher’s voice—thankfully muted—couldn’t pierce the silence of Arsenal’s thoughts. And for those in red, it felt more title parade than football match.
But football is a devilish poet. It gives where it shouldn’t, and withholds where it mustn’t.
Early in the second half, hope, fragile and fleeting, lifted its head once more. A floated ball. Martinelli—unmarked, astonishingly unmarked—rose and flicked his header with the grace of a ballerina. Net. Rippling. And a flicker. Just a flicker.
The Weight of Legacy
And then, on 66 minutes—how poetic, how preordained—on comes Trent Alexander-Arnold. Number 66, summoned as if by fate itself. A Scouser by birth, a Red by destiny. A boy who once kicked a ball against Anfield walls and dreamed, and then lived the dream—every boy’s dream—to wear this shirt, that crest, in this stadium. And yet… and yet he is jeered.
Jeered not by strangers, but by his own.
How cruel is football’s memory. How fleeting is its gratitude.
This is Trent—once the golden son of the Kop, now a ghost in his own colosseum. He brought trophies, he brought triumph, he brought tears of joy. And now he brings only scorn?
Liverpool, how could you?
Shame on those who forget. For this was one of your own. But Still…
Arsenal threatened to rewrite history.
Odegaard’s Thunder, Merino’s Flicker
Ødegaard. Distance. Venom. Off the post, via a brilliant Allison hand, and there—there was Merino, alive to the moment, nodding home. The flag up. Then down. Then VAR. Of course VAR. Trent Alexander-Arnold—of all people—kept him onside. The pantomime villain. The departing son of Anfield. A toe, a twist. 2-2. And suddenly, Arsenal were not just back—they were alive.
But like all Shakespearean acts, there must be a fall.
Merino again. Eager, tenacious, overzealous. Already booked. He stretches, a poke of a toe, and the foul is inevitable. The card is not cruel—it is correct. The dreamer is dismissed. From saviour to scapegoat in just a few tragic minutes. A red among red.
And then, the spectacle within the spectacle. A free-kick. Trent, standing above it. A lifetime of memories, of moments. Booed on, perhaps booed off. The ball arced, the world paused. And it curled, dangerously so, towards the corner of dreams. But just wide. Just wide. And with it, the drama remained suspended.
Substitutions rolled like dice in a casino. Zinchenko, Tierney, Calafiori—all fullbacks, all desperate men in a desperate cause. Arsenal’s bench: threadbare. Their resources: frayed. Their resolve: tested.
And then… five added minutes of torment. The siege. The onslaught. This was the Etihad all over again, except here, it was Liverpool—the bear poked and now ravenous. Arsenal down to 10, defending like lions, but caged.
94 minutes. Cross. Header. Raya saves—spectacular. But the rebound. Andy Robertson! Anfield erupts! The narrative complete! The story written!
But no…
The referee. Whistle to lips. Foul. Kounate—over-passionate, over the top, but ultimately illegal. The dream goal chalked off. The Kop gasps. Arsenal lives. And from agony to ecstasy in one screech of the whistle.
And so it ends. At 2-2. Not in blood, but in breathlessness.
Arsenal: daring, doomed, defiant.
Liverpool: champions, but reminded—just reminded—that even amid a coronation, resistance still breathes.
Victoria Concordia Crescit