How Salah and Liverpool exploited Arsenal’s woeful defence

Our final write-up of Gameweek 20 is from Saturday night’s match at Anfield.

The main Fantasy talking points, goal details, manager quotes and injury news are all included in our analysis of Liverpool’s five-goal hammering of Arsenal.

Liverpool 5-1 Arsenal

• Goals: Roberto Firmino (£9.1m) x3, Mohamed Salah (£13.3m), Sadio Mane (£9.5m) | Ainsley Maitland-Niles (£4.4m)
• Assists: Mohamed Salah, Dejan Lovren (£4.9m) | Alex Iwobi (£5.4m)

Jurgen Klopp paid tribute to Liverpool’s attacking assets after yet another exhilarating display going forward, even if the Reds were helped along the way by some suicidal Arsenal defending.

Klopp’s side bounced back from a goal down to run out 5-1 winners on Saturday, with Roberto Firmino (£9.1m), Mohamed Salah (£13.3m) and Sadio Mane (£9.5m) all scoring and producing excellent displays up top.

The Liverpool boss said:

The reaction [to going behind] was obviously brilliant, absolutely brilliant. We didn’t concede a lot of goals obviously this year so you never know exactly how the reaction will be if you concede one, especially the first in the game, but the reaction was brilliant, just outstanding. We increased the intensity again a little bit, immediately put them under pressure again.

Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly how it was around the first goal, I saw the goal then but I forgot how it was, but I know the second goal was just brilliant defending. Sadio comes inside, puts the defender under pressure, wins the ball back then bam – Bobby goes more or less through the wall and scores that fantastic goal.

The [fourth] one was a penalty, Mo in a one-on-one situation going in the box is always difficult for the defender and he finished that off with a fantastic penalty, and then the [other] one I just love because it’s again a goal after a second ball off a set-piece. We pass, pass, then Mo is there and can bring the ball in again and Sadio can finish it. So, good.

Two of Liverpool’s goals came from the penalty spot, while the fact that Firmino’s first two strikes had no Fantasy assists attached to them underscored just how compliant Arsenal’s backline had been in gifting Liverpool several of their goals.

Firmino deserves immense credit after his jinking run put Liverpool 2-1 up but Arsenal’s hapless defenders played a big part on Saturday, particularly in the equalising goal when Stephan Lichtsteiner (£4.5m) crashed the ball off Shkodran Mustafi (£5.4m) and into the Brazilian’s path.

Salah scored from the penalty spot for the second game running and his contribution was for once overshadowed by one of his colleagues, but this was another superb display from the Egyptian: Salah’s first-time assist for Mane’s goal and his backheeled flick to set up a Fabinho (£5.5m) chance were particularly deserving of mention. Only Raheem Sterling (£11.3m) registered more penalty box touches than Salah in Gameweek 13, with FPL’s most expensive player again lining up as the spearhead of the Liverpool attack in this encounter.

That Salah has delivered 12-point hauls in each of the last two Gameweeks (and indeed in the fixture before that) while having only two attempts on goal from open play is a particularly terrifying prospect for non-owners once he gets his shooting boots on.

Mane and Firmino have come in for their share of criticism this season in Fantasy circles and beyond but the pair were both excellent on Saturday.

Over 70,000 FPL managers have snapped up Firmino since Gameweek 20, which does seem a little “kneejerk” given that he had two goals in his previous 14 league outings and that he continues to be played variously in deeper/wider positions.

The nature of this hat-trick was also fairly fortuitous, with Salah gifting Firmino Liverpool’s second penalty to complete his treble – to the chagrin of the Egyptian’s owners.

Klopp said of that gesture:

We scored the fifth and 2018 ends with a Christmas present from Mo Salah. I love it, the gesture, I love it. He gives the ball to Bobby and he can score a hat-trick, so that’s just nice. In the moment I was not too happy because in training Bobby doesn’t finish penalties too often, to be honest, but obviously today it was his day [and that’s] absolutely OK.

Arsenal deserve some credit for their attacking performance, with Ainsley Maitland-Niles (£4.4m) and Alex Iwobi (£5.4m) performing well on the flanks and combining for Arsenal’s opening goal.

The Gunners cut Liverpool open on a handful of occasions and Klopp again highlighted the drawbacks of a 4-2-3-1, a system he surely won’t employ for the trip to the Etihad on Thursday:

Could we have played better in the first half? Yes, of course. Could we have defended better in the first half? Yes. We were a bit too open, a bit too wide in the formation. Arsenal is a really good football team and after ten minutes we already forced them to play long balls but after 20 minutes they again played football, because we didn’t adapt in the right way.

We wanted to change that in half-time and obviously did that, but we needed then a substitution [with] bringing Hendo to close the half-spaces because Ramsey was constantly in the half-spaces. [That] makes life a little bit uncomfortable with only two central midfielders, so we put in a third one and controlled that.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£11.4m) didn’t really get a sniff, registering only one headed half-chance, though his withdrawal on 71 minutes will perhaps provide the Gabonese forward’s owners with some hope regarding his chances of starting against Fulham in Gameweek 21.

Emery meanwhile confirmed that Mesut Ozil (£8.0m) missed out through injury:

His knee. I don’t know if it’s big or not big, but it’s his knee.

Liverpool XI (4-2-3-1): Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Lovren, Van Dijk, Robertson (Clyne 83′); Wijnaldum (Lallana 78′), Fabinho; Shaqiri, Firmino, Mane (Henderson 62′); Salah.

Arsenal XI (4-2-3-1): Leno; Lichtsteiner, Sokratis, Mustafi (Koscielny 46′), Kolasinac (Guendouzi 80′); Torreira, Xhaka; Maitland-Niles, Ramsey, Iwobi; Aubameyang (Lacazette 71′).

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