In the pub before a ball was kicked, I said I would have taken a draw yesterday, so in the cold light of this Monday morning, it would be churlish of me to decry and bemoan the fact we dropped points against Liverpool yesterday.

I was in a slightly unfamiliar territory in the upper tier of the Clock End yesterday and whilst that affords one the vantage point of full coverage of the game and how the match plays out (in comparison to my Block Five ‘vibes’ seat I normally have), it also made me feel a little more nervous than usual for this encounter. “We need to score early” was my request to the people around me as I took my seat; Arsenal had done it in each of our last four games and Liverpool have always taken the lead this season, barring their defeat at home to Forest. That’s where the return of Bukayo Saka came in and on 10 minutes we were ahead. It was a great ball by Ben White, Saka still had a fair bit to do when he got it under control, but we saw yesterday in that move just why it was such a big boost to see him back in the team from the off. A fine finish, a well-timed run, an Arsenal team with an early goal and hope for three points was kicked off.

It was a lead that would last just seven minutes though, as we switched off on a corner and van Dijk – who I wonder whether he could have been sent off with his kick out off the ball from Havertz before then – nodded in from a Diaz flick. It was a pretty well-worked goal to be fair, but I suspect Arsenal will be in the video room today and tomorrow tutting a bit from our defending.

That goal seemed to kick us back in to dominance in that first half and most of our play and attacking impetus was between that goal and when Merino headed us in on 42 minutes. Liverpool offered very little, I thought, with Raya seeming like a passenger and Timber and Partey keeping Salah and Diaz very quiet indeed. The Liverpool tactical game plan was fairly obvious; Kelleher to distribute long balls in to the channels to test a make shift right back and a right back playing left back who had been injured for the last few weeks. Both Partey and Timber dealt with Liverpool’s attackers quite well, I thought.

All we needed was a goal to get our noses in front. Step forward new boy Mikel Merino and as Rice delivered that peach of a ball in from the free kick, his header was true and on point. Goal. VAR tried its best to intervene, they took an absolute age for something that looked fairly obvious after one replay, but we’re used to that these days, eh?

The challenge we had was how we were going to keep Liverpool as quiet in the second half, as they were in the first, although that was never going to be an easy task and you could tell as bodies started dropping as the game started to tick towards it’s conclusion that this was going to be a big ask. The injury to big Gabi just feels like it’s us being punished by the footballing gods again. We just can’t seem to catch a break and Arteta said he wasn’t sure if it was the ankle or the knee joint, which is a real worry. We’ll have Saliba back next weekend, but I suspect Gabriel is now a doubt too, but I thought Kiwior had a great game when he came on for big Gabi and that at least was a positive.

I can’t quite work out why we were so passive in that second half though. Yes, I know we were winning and yes, I know we have a good defence who back themselves to shut out teams, but this is a good Liverpool side and we were patched up defence who lost both Timber and Gabriel in that second half; we should have been a little more aggressive in searching for that third goal, I thought. Last season we did that and our reward was a 3-1 win. This season we didn’t get that second goal and it was Liverpool who scored through Salah to snatch back a draw on our turf.

It was probably deserved to be fair, because although I didn’t think they created too many chances in that second half, they had more territory and more threat than we did until they equalised. We looked like a team who were missing a few players and had suffered some in game injuries, but we could still have done better with that second half I thought. And as soon as it went back to 2-2, we started to have a go again, and probably should have had a goal too were it not for Antony Taylor seeing something that nobody else in the world could see with Kiwior winning a perfectly good header and getting penalised for a foul. Last season at Anfield Liverpool fans were up in arms about the Odegaard handball, so this time around they don’t get to bleat on about that when we have had an injustice done to us right at the death like that. It was a perfectly fine header he won and Taylor should never have called it back for a foul.

So the honours have been shared, a point a piece and as I said right at the top of today’s blog it was a point I would have taken beforehand. The hope now is that big Gabi and Timber’s knocks aren’t more serious, for which we won’t really find out until tomorrow when Arteta is quizzed by the press ahead of our trip up to Preston. Fingers crossed they are ok.

We’re podding tonight at 8pm on the Same Old Arsenal podcast, so if you fancy joining us to re-live yesterday’s action, you can do so here.

Otherwise, I’ll be beck tomorrow on here as we look ahead to Preston in the League Cup. Catch you then.