Following an indifferent start to the season, Arsenal seemed to turn a corner, producing positive results on a consistent basis.
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Assistant manager Pepijn Lijnders is preparing Liverpool for a tough second leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal. With the tie finely poised following the 0-0 draw at Anfield last week, the Reds will travel to Emirates to face an in-form Gunners on Thursday night. Following an indifferent start to the season, Arsenal seemed to turn a corner, producing positive results on a consistent basis. Mikel Arteta has received most of the plaudits and Lijnders is the latest person to shower praise on the Arsenal manager.
In a press conference on Wednesday, he was asked whether the advantage is with Arsenal in the tie, Lijnders said, “First of all, Arsenal always had really good players but, for me, they have a really good team at this moment. I think credit to Mikel, they matured. You see many games where the team with 10 men plays better than the 11 – not play better but they give just this extra step, they give this extra [bit] more because they know they have one player less. What happens many times with the 11 players is that they do one thing less because they know they have one player more.”
“That’s exactly what happened. Anyway, what I like about the Arsenal game is that we wanted to surprise them with our intensity and that’s what we did until Xhaka went off. I really think that in football the only advantage exists if you go to the last minute of the game, to be honest. Before that, it’s quite even. I think Mikel did an unbelievable job. The team is a proper team. They were struggling as well with injuries and, how you said, COVID cases and they had to change as well in the last minute, but if you can play with 10 men like that then you have a mature and good team.”
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Liverpool are coming into this match on the back of a 3-0 victory over Brentford in the Premier League at the weekend. Speaking about the victory over Brentford, Lijnders said, “I really liked our performance. We know how difficult it is to play against this team. The ball is a lot of the time in the air, so you need this switch of mood constantly between fighting for first and second balls and then putting it on the floor and really playing. We did this really well, so that’s why we got more control over the game and in the end we could have the result with 68 per cent possession, 27 shots, 13 on target, one of our better performances.”
“We always analyse and always look ahead to the next game and we know what we want. We go to Arsenal because it’s clear now that we need to win, so that’s good I think. If it’s in 90 minutes, if it’s in 120 minutes or if it’s with penalties, we need to win this game. When we start the season, we always speak about that we want to create memories, that we want to create memories with our fans, that we want to create special games. It’s good that we are in January and we speak about reaching finals, it’s good that we are in January and we speak about reaching Wembley. We are going to try with everything we have to reach Wembley, to compete there. It’s clear we need to go there and win but hopefully we can create a special game.”
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