An incredible second-half spell from Liverpool saw Jurgen Klopp’s men run riot against Arsenal, claiming a 4-3 win in the penultimate game of the opening weekend of Premier League football.
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With three of his first-team defenders unavailable to face Liverpool, Wenger gave an English Premier League debut to 20-year-old Rob Holding, alongside 21-year-old Calum Chambers in central defense.
Theo Walcott put Arsenal ahead at Emirates Stadium, but his side was soon overwhelmed after Liverpool leveled through Philippe Coutinho on the stroke of halftime and then raced into a 4-1 lead after the break.
Alexis Sanchez and Aaron Ramsey – who limped off with a hamstring injury – did start the game despite having had just two weeks of pre-season training.
“They are not ready to play this sort of game and get injured like Ramsey or you give them a rest and not have them for the start”. He said to use how fit we are and how we can really push on in the second half. “We had four players who went very late”, he told reporters.
He added: “Maybe we lacked a bit of experience, but if you look well at the goals, I don’t think it was necessarily the inexperienced players that cost us the goals today”.
“We are not ready”. But we’ll see first what we can do with the players who are preparing at the moment and how many players are injured today – can they recover for next week?
“But we are not stupid”.
“They didn’t have a go at anyone, they supported the team, but at the end I think it’s nearly fair if they are a bit upset with the game, another bad start to a season”.
While Arsenal were wretched at the start of the second period, it’s easy to forget that the likes of Mesut Ozil, Olivier Giroud, Laurent Koscielny, Per Mertesacker, Danny Welbeck and Jack Wilshere were all missing through injuries. “You have to accept sometimes that you can not control absolutely everything even if you try to be as intelligent as possible”.
But Philippe Coutinho – scorer of a stunning victor at Stoke City on the opening weekend of last season – repeated the feat with an unstoppable free kick in first-half stoppage time. ‘We started the game not so brightly after we thought we had quite a good pre-season but it’s always hard coming to Arsenal.
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said he was wrong to celebrate Sadio Mane’s goal so exuberantly – his side’s fourth.
Manager Juergen Klopp said that Liverpool had worked to be more compact in defence after halftime.
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“Scoring four goals is wonderful, conceding three is the opposite of emotions”, Klopp said.
