Three games into a new season, it is not being wise after the event if the thought should occur that maybe it would have better for everyone, not least Arsène Wenger himself, if he had guaranteed a happy ending after winning the FA Cup in May and spared himself these kinds of ordeals. Arsenal, once again, are lurching towards another of their now-familiar crises. It all feels so predictable and the danger for Wenger is that the boos from the away end here might become the soundtrack to his season. Liverpool outclassed them in every department and perhaps the most worrying part for Arsenal’s fans is that these kinds of routs no longer feel like a shock. Arsenal have now conceded 17 goals in their last five Anfield visits and, if anything, it was a surprise the latest capitulation stopped at four. Arsenal – weak, rudderless, anaemic – were not a great deal worse that time they let in eight at Manchester United.
Yet again, it was all the usual shortcomings, all the same old problems that should have been addressed a long time but now feel synonymous with the latter part of Wenger’s fading reign. Liverpool were a class apart and, in the process, Jürgen Klopp’s men proved something here. Liverpool without Philippe Coutinho have been portrayed in some quarters as a flower without sunlight. It simply isn’t true. Whatever happens with Coutinho, Liverpool are entitled to think optimistically when Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah are capable of playing with this kind of vibrancy. All of their three attackers scored, along with the substitute Daniel Sturridge, and by the time Salah had sprinted half the length of the pitch to stroke in the third goal Alexis Sánchez was crouched down by the left touchline, lost in his own thoughts and cut off from the rest of his team-mates. His body language told its own story.
Perhaps they were unlucky to come up against a Liverpool side playing at the point of maximum expression but, unfortunately for Arsenal, these are the occasions when we are reminded why Sánchez wants out, why Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain thinks there might be greater adventures elsewhere and why a third player, Mesut Özil, is guilty of leaving the same impression. Wenger was asked afterwards what had gone wrong. “Everything,” he said. Arsenal have now lost nine out of their last 14 away games if we think back to the travel sickness that afflicted them last season, too. They took only nine points from their 10 games against the other top-six sides in that campaign and it would be madness, on the evidence of their latest defeat, to think they will be any closer to challenging for the title this season.
