Another year, another Premier League goal against Arsenal for Mohamed Salah.
The Egyptian’s late equaliser in the 2-2 draw on Sunday means he has scored against Arsenal in eight consecutive seasons. Yet, for most of the game, Mikel Arteta’s side limited Salah’s attacking threat.
Under Arne Slot, Salah has been the fulcrum of Liverpool’s attack and Arsenal were well prepared to defend against him.
The most obvious change in Salah’s attacking role this season has been his additional task as a direct outlet when Liverpool are being pressed up the pitch.
Pressing out of their 4-4-2 shape, Arsenal were constantly aware of Liverpool’s direct balls into the right-winger and its variations.
First, Jurrien Timber, who was operating as Arsenal’s left-back, was usually in the correct position when Caoimhin Kelleher played direct passes into Salah.
The left-back’s awareness meant he was regularly in place to compete for the aerial duel, and to stop Liverpool from finding Salah’s runs behind the defence in the possession phase.
When Darwin Nunez roamed towards the right side to flick the ball towards Salah and combine with him, Arsenal were prepared as well.
The idea behind Nunez’s positioning was to give Timber and Gabriel a dilemma — in terms of who was supposed to move up and contest the aerial duel — and the fraction-of-a-second delay allowed the centre-forward to combine with Salah.
However, Timber and Gabriel stuck to their markers in this scenario.
In addition to that, Timber was not distracted by Liverpool’s off-ball runners when Virgil van Dijk was in a position to play his customary diagonal pass to Salah. In these situations, Timber stuck to Liverpool’s right-winger and left the runner for the centre-backs to handle.
In this example, Timber does not hesitate because of Trent Alexander-Arnold’s positioning, and dashes forwards to intercept Van Dijk’s pass to Salah.
One move that Liverpool have been doing this season is directly finding Salah, before he plays a pass backwards while a team-mate attacks the space, with the final aim of finding the third-man run.
Here, Salah tries to drop and link the play…
… but Timber is aware of his movement, and more importantly, Ben White has moved across the pitch to protect the space Liverpool’s move aims to exploit.
This is not needed because Declan Rice intercepts Alexander-Arnold’s pass into Salah, but at least Arsenal’s defence are in the correct positions in case the Egyptian resets the ball backwards and it is played into Nunez.
In the second half, Arteta’s side defended deeper, which meant Liverpool could access Salah higher down the right wing by circulating the ball there rather than going direct.
It meant Gabriel Martinelli’s defensive duties increased, with the left-winger regularly dropping to support Timber.
In this example, Alexander-Arnold tries to directly find Salah down the right wing, but Martinelli is well positioned to support his left-back…
… and manages to win the ball off the Egyptian. When defending against Salah in these situations, Timber and Martinelli distanced themselves from each other to be able to guard against any underlapping runs.
As for defending crosses from the other side, Martinelli also dropped to prevent Liverpool from overloading Timber at the far post.
Here, the left-winger’s positioning allows him to track Alexander-Arnold’s movement, and lets Timber focus on stopping Salah. Cody Gakpo tries to find Salah towards the far post…
… but Timber is once again in the right position to clear the ball.
For the majority of the match, Arsenal neutralised Liverpool’s attacking threat — especially Salah — but offensive and defensive transitions proved to be costly in the second half.
Arsenal’s poor decision-making and execution when they won the ball back prevented them from creating dangerous chances on the counter.
Meanwhile, Liverpool’s best opportunities in the second half came on the transition. Earlier in the half, Curtis Jones won the ball in midfield, before Salah combined with Alexis Mac Allister to force a save from David Raya.
Then later in the game, Martinelli lost the ball down the left wing, which left him and Myles Lewis-Skelly out of position when defending the counter. From this position, Alexander-Arnold played the ball into space…
… and Salah moved inside to provide his centre-forward with a passing option. Nunez then set up the right-winger, who scored to make it 2-2.
“Don’t allow them to run in open spaces,” Arteta told NBC Sports when asked if there’s something his team should have done differently.
“They (Liverpool) have done it in two ways. One, when you don’t finish the actions, especially when you are running (and) we play vertical, we have to finish the actions. The other one is when we started to play a little more direct and they have spaces to run behind you.”
The final result puts Arsenal five points away from the top of the Premier League, but the performance means that they are on the right track.
