Arne Slot and Mikel Arteta glaring issues obvious as Arsenal and Liverpool in drab draw

Arsenal missed the chance to open up an eight-point gap at the top of the Premier League as Mikel Arteta’s side failed to find their best against a toothless Liverpool side

Arsenal failed to capitalise on Manchester City’s third draw in a row on Wednesday as the Gunners failed to produce their best against a toothless Liverpool in a 0-0 draw at the Emirates.

Arne Slot faced the daunting task of heading to the Emirates to take on an in-form Gunners side, hot off the back of five consecutive league wins. The clash promised much with Liverpool looking to leap back into the Champions League places following Brentford’s win on Wednesday, but it failed to live up to anywhere near the expectations.

Slot once again put his faith in Milos Kerkez at left-back, backing the struggling Hungarian to handle Bukayo Saka over the experienced Andy Robertson. A decision that looked baffling before kick-off and even more so when the England winger skipped past him and Alexis Mac Allister to square a ball across the face of goal that only required a touch.

It was obvious Arsenal’s ploy to get Saka on the ball as much as possible and their star man again jinxed away from Kerkez to force Alisson into the first real save of the match from the edge of the box. Kerkez did improve as the game went on and pushed Saka back into defensive positions he didn’t want to find himself in when the Reds left-back ran forwards.

The opening proceedings were dominated by Arsenal, in particular Saka, but one lapse in communication between William Saliba and David Raya almost left the Gunners pair embarrassed.

Seemingly not hearing a call from his advancing keeper, Saliba played an unopposed back pass to Raya just as the Spaniard was running out to collect the ball. Quick footwork from Raya stopped a shocking own goal but his clearance fell to Mac Allister, who struck the bar with a chip from 25 yards.

That moment gave the travelling support and visiting players something to play off after a fruitless opening 25 minutes.

Given the big build-up before the game of this fixture bringing goals and flashpoints, we had to sit through a largely drab opening 35 minutes before Virgil van Dijk and Declan Rice clashed and had to be separated after the Arsenal midfielder played on despite Jeremie Frimpong going down injured in the Gunners penalty box.

Saka saw another sight of goal blocked by a desperate last ditch block by Kerkez after the £40million summer signing was bullied out of the way, but he was able to recover to close out the best chance of the first 45 and crucially redeem himself.

The second-half kicked off with the match perfectly in the balance for the neutral and the moment that would have sparked the game into life almost came just minutes after the restart when Florian Wirtz wriggled his way through the Arsenal box but overran the ball before he was checked by Leandro Trossard, forcing a brief but uneventful VAR check.

It took 16 minutes for the first shot of the second half and it managed the quality of the respective teams in the final third as Dominik Szoboszlai spooned a free-kick towards the corner flag attempting to recreate his winning goal at Anfield earlier in the season. He went closer with another effort with 10 minutes to play, landing that strike on the roof of the net.

However, the strike saw Liverpool take control for the first time in the game and leave Arsenal fans edgy, swiftly seeing Arteta go to his bench and bring on Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus for Trossard and Viktor Gyokeres, who was virtually invisible again up top after having just eight touches in the entire game.

The striker that Arteta wanted so badly is undeniably a problem with just two league goals since the start of September and offering nothing of off it, or frankly on it.

Meanwhile, Liverpool look lost without a striker after Hugo Ekitike was ruled out of the clash after picking up a knock before the draw against Fulham on Sunday. Alexander Isak remains sidelined for a couple of months and will take even longer to return to full sharpness that he hasn’t even had while at Liverpool.

Wirtz started in a false nine role but found himself so deep coming to look for possession that Gabriel and William Saliba were given a largely quiet night apart from the odd runs in behind on the wing by Frimpong and Cody Gakpo that they had to mop up.

Jesus got a late header on target to force Alisson into his first save of the second half in added time. But the last chance of the game and final touch from Gabriel failed to turn a header inside the far post.

The game saw a sour end though as Conor Bradley was stretchered off with a worrying-looking injury after Martinell had thrown the ball at him and attempted to push him off the pitch – sparking outrage among the Liverpool players and seeing Gary Neville rightly call the incident a “disgrace”.