You don’t often get the terms ‘boring game’ and ‘Arsenal’ in the same sentence these days like you might have a couple of decades ago, but tonight’s game between Arsenal and Liverpool was a boring one indeed. I recorded the game so I could come home from work and give it a watch and even managed to avoid the result, which is probably a good thing given that I likely would have deleted the recording and watched the evening news had I heard it was going to end up 1-0 to the Gunners. It wasn’t that Liverpool didn’t try, the effort was there, they just created so little and baring one or two brief chances, never looked a threat to score on the Arsenal goal. What has happened to the Liverpool team that scored for fun towards the later half of last season?

Arsenal who had previously lost games to Man Utd and Chelsea were looking to bounce back and even they must have been wondering were the first goal was coming from for a large portion of the game was passes went astray and chances never really materialized. I thought for a while it was going to be Liverpool’s night – they looked like the team up for it – if indeed being ‘up for it’ can be measured by literally rolling up your sleeves on a cold winters night in North London. I counted five Liverpool players who went short sleeved for the night (predictably they were, Carrigher, Skrtel, Agger, Kuyt and Gerrard) with zero doing the same for Arsenal – the majority of which elected to put on wooly gloves. It wasn’t to be Liverpool’s night though regardless of their anti-chocolate-man stance.

When Arsenal finally did get their go-ahead goal Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez sat on his hands for a while before deciding to do something attacking wise to the line-up. He brought on concrete foot Babel who with a first touch as delecate as a Elephant on speed managed to carve Liverpool’s best chance of the game hitting the bar. Babel then settled into his roll of average player along with most of the rest of the team as Liverpool tried to get something going but watched move after move break down. If ever they missed Torres to link up to Gerrard, it was tonight.

I shouldn’t be too harsh on the boys for lately form has been decent and Benitez has even been making good on his guarantee that the team will finish in the top four though after tonight with Man City having two games in hand it is still going to be a real battle regardless of the fact they currently sit forth. But while Benitez’s job should rightly ride on his ‘guarantee’, the recent charge up the table shouldn’t be enough to gain him ultimate praise – Dirk Kuyt’s recent surge in form has more to do with the recent results than anything else. Kuyt’s form has been timely with Torres going down hurt, again, but stuck out on the right again tonight limited anything he was likely to do. Kuyt works hard on the right, but is much better suited up the middle I believe. N’Gog got that roll tonight and got his first touch of the game on what seemed like the 80th minute of the match.

Read more about: 2009/10 Premier League, Arsenal, Boring Boring Arsenal, Liverpool | ALL SUBJECTS |

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