Theo Walcott missed a penalty before making amends 69 seconds later to give Arsenal the lead before Philippe Coutinho levelled on the stroke of half-time with a superb free-kick. The Gunners, unfortunately, were not able to continue the tempo in the second half.
Advertisement
Adam Lallana, Coutinho and Sadio Mane then put Liverpool 1-4 up just 18 minutes into the second half.
“Then the manager said a lot of things we needed to improve on in the second half and I felt we did that”, said Henderson, who praised his teammates for how they “came out firing in the second-half” and “got some brilliant goals”.
Liverpool headed to the Emirates Stadium in search of a winning start to the Premier League season, and got just that with a remarkable 4-3 win over Arsenal.
Brand new season, same old problems for Arsenal.
The Gunners star had been rushed back into action by Wenger despite the Wales midfielder’s lack of sharpness following this summer’s European Championships. The boss chose to give extended rest to Laurent Koscielny, Olivier Giroud and Mesut Ozil after their involvement in the UEFA EURO 2016.
“You are in a catch 22 situation with the Euros – do you give the players a rest and start the season without many of your players?”
“When they did come forward, they looked like a real force and another plus for Jurgen Klopp is the depth in his squad that allowed him to bring Emre Can and Divock Origi off the bench in the second half”.
Per Mertesacker, Arsenal’s questionable new club captain, and Gabriel are also unavailable, with the former ruled out until the new year.
While talking about the game after the match, Wenger said: “We pushed players today like Ramsey”. “If they can not get that striker, they should play Alexis Sanchez with Olivier Giroud”.
“The second-half performance at times was very good especially when we went two or three goals in the lead”, England global Henderson told the club’s website yesterday.
But he refused to blame the kids, added: “If you look at the goals it’s not necessarily the defence that cost us”.
“Scoring four is wonderful, conceding three is the opposite”, Klopp said.
Advertisement
Despite coming out on top of the seven-goal thriller, Klopp also said there was room for improvement.
