Don’t let Arsenal v Liverpool fool you. Elite teams are evolving away from all-out attack

After its harum-scarum years, the game is now about denying the opposition and keeping possession in dangerous areas

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It finished 2-2. Twice Arsenal had the lead and twice Liverpool pegged them back. By the end, Arsenal had a back four that contained not a single first-choice element in its usual place and yet had still seemed oddly untested late on. Set it out like that and it sounds like a madcap thriller and yet, somehow, it all felt slightly flat.

Arsenal even had what many in the ground celebrated as an injury-time winner ruled out, although it turned out the referee Anthony Taylor had already blown for a foul by Jakub Kiwior, something that really should have been obvious from Gabriel Jesus’s body language as he poked the ball over the line. This is Arsenal, and so there had to be a conspiracy theory, which beyond the incontrovertible fact that Taylor is from Greater Manchester (like, you know, Manchester City: coincidence? Really?), seemed to focus on the fact that the referee had paused momentarily before giving a fairly straightforward decision. Waiting to see if there might be an advantage? Or getting his orders from the shadowy anti-Arsenal forces that run the game?

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