{"id":5047,"date":"2022-03-15T21:14:22","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T21:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=5047"},"modified":"2022-03-17T14:41:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T14:41:42","slug":"arsenal-vs-liverpool-friends-or-foes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=5047","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal vs Liverpool-Friends or Foes?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p>One of British football\u2019s greatest rivalries resumes on Wednesday evening as Arsenal once again lock horns with the most decorated club in the country. Our battles with Liverpool are often memorable and sometimes nothing short of legendary. There are plenty of sub-plots for this one too; the fake positives debacle from earlier in the season; and the recent twists and turns in both the title race; and the battle for the final Champions League spot. It has all the ingredients of another game for the ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But before we delve into the context of this particular meeting, lets look at some of the matches from the past that make this such a special fixture. When Arsenal and Liverpool met in the 1950 FA cup final, Liverpool were yet to win the trophy, and this wouldn\u2019t change on the day with the Gunners running out 2-0 winners at Wembley thanks to a brace from Reg Lewis. It was Arsenal\u2019s third triumph in the competition. We\u2019ve won it a few more times since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout our history, the club has been part of many \u2018firsts\u2019 in The Beautiful Game. And this encounter in 1964 was no different as Arsenal and Liverpool played the first ever fixture in English football to be broadcast live on national television. Unfortunately, Arsenal went down 3-2 on this occasion but we\u2019ve played on the telly a few more times since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a id=\"AMwm7sfRRidXE3nvva6rFQ\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2695067\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'AMwm7sfRRidXE3nvva6rFQ',sig:'p04zvhTySpdsO-0LhXujlbEpsY2AeRiH8mmcC4dNti4=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2695067',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" async=\"\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>There was also the \u201971 cup final made famous by Charlie George\u2019s winning goal celebration where he lay down on the sun-drenched Wembley turf after giving Arsenal the lead again. It was also half of our first ever league and cup double. The celebration became iconic with school children to the point where it was re-enacted in the playground and it is still replayed at The Emirates on the big screens before every game over fifty years later. I think that\u2019s what you call standing the test of time. Apparently, there was another encounter in May 1989, but I don\u2019t think anything particularly eventful occurred. Just some team winning the league at Anfield on goals scored or something like that. Only joking. Nowadays Sky like to tell us that a football club entirely funded by an oil state beating a ten-man, relegation threatened QPR who employed absolute non-entities like Joey Barton, was more dramatic but anyone who is lucky enough to have the inside knowledge that football did indeed exist before 1992, knows that Anfield \u201989 was the culmination of the closest title race in English football history. You had to be there really. Which I wasn\u2019t because I wasn\u2019t born for another twelve years. Incidentally, ClockEndRider had a ticket for the game but being the Negative Nancy that he is, he decided not to bother because you know, as if we were going to win at Anfield by two clear goals. We did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There have been plenty more great encounters between the two sides and in truth, it was very difficult to choose which games to talk about, but the context of this upcoming meeting is so great it merits examination to the nth degree also. Liverpool sit second in the table behind the Oilers and above the former Oilers. Following Citeh\u2019s goalless draw at Palace Liverpool now have the opportunity to move to within a single point of the champions with the same number of games played. You could argue this will probably make them more fired up for this one which isn\u2019t good news for us given our poor recent record against them. They do give the impression of having a whole host of players who seemingly always score a brace against us. This will be our 4<sup>th<\/sup> match up with Liverpool this season and the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> of 2022 already. We haven\u2019t managed a goal in any of the previous three so Mikel Arteta will hope that changes on Wednesday. In fairness, Arsenal are not doing too badly ourselves. We currently find our team on an incredible run of form with nine wins in the last eleven matches including all the last five. So, we do at least go into this one with some confidence. In terms of who\u2019s available there doesn\u2019t seem to be any change on that front. Personally, I think we will see the same eleven who strolled past Leicester on Sunday. It doesn\u2019t look like Tomiyasu is particularly close to a recovery and with another international break coming up you sense the club are taking their time with him as he slowly nurses his way back to full fitness. In fairness, Cedric has proved to be excellent back-up but he will face a huge test against one of Mane or Dias on that right hand side. In terms of the Liverpool side, it looks as though they will be more or less full strength. There have been murmurs that Salah may miss out with a foot injury after he limped off in their win at Brighton on Saturday but I would be pretty wary of any wool Liverpool try to pull over our eyes after those fake positives. You\u2019d be shocked if he doesn\u2019t start on Wednesday. Up front it\u2019s likely Jota, who always scores at least a couple against us, will start flanked by Salah and Mane\/Dias. Their midfield three will likely be Fabinho, Henderson and Keita. Thiago has struggled with injuries since his big money arrival from Bayern in 2020 and Oxlade Chamberlain is struggling with not being very good at football. The back four will be the Poundland KT on the left, Konate and VVD at the back with Trent Alexander Arnold at right back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It goes without saying that Liverpool is a world class side, and in my opinion, there isn\u2019t a side in world football that plays a better brand of football than them. Therefore, it will be incredibly difficult to beat them or even just avoid defeat, but I remain confident that we will at the very least be competitive throughout. The players should draw confidence from the City game where we were not only leading the champions for the first hour but dominating them. Hopefully on this occasion the referee doesn\u2019t decide to be the star of the show and Xhaka doesn\u2019t have any brain farts. This game will be a very interesting indicator of just how far we have come in the last few months and all eyes will be on us for this one such is the magnitude of this game. I am going for an optimistic 2-1 victory for the Arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>COYG!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of British football\u2019s greatest rivalries resumes on Wednesday evening as Arsenal once again lock horns with the most decorated club in the country. Our battles with Liverpool are often memorable and sometimes nothing short of legendary. There are plenty of sub-plots for this one too; the fake positives debacle from earlier in the season; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5047"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5047"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5056,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5047\/revisions\/5056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}