Liverpool display title-fight steel after Arsenal and Man City show glimpses of weakness

A seventh win from eight games leaves Arne Slot’s Liverpool back on top of the Premier League, a point clear of Manchester City and now four better off than Arsenal. Having passed a first major test of the Premier League campaign against Chelsea, could they really give us a three-way title fight?

1. Even before the weekend, this stood out as a significant Liverpool v Chelsea clash, even by the standards of such things. For Arne Slot’s Liverpool, a first Premier League test against anything close to a direct rival after a start that had hitherto featured no member of last season’s top seven and whose toughest test on paper had been a trip to the leaking theatre of misery, the black hole of banter where Manchester United Football Club once stood.

For Chelsea, a chance to show that the promise they had shown since a predictable opening-weekend defeat to Man City was also sustainable in the face of higher-calibre opposition.

But the weekend’s events even before this Super Sunday clash only heightened it all. Arsenal showing ill-discipline and losing their unbeaten start at Bournemouth could only be at best half-expected, while the doubts about Man City’s irresistible inevitability sans Rodri were in evidence again in their lengthy struggle to eventually get the better of a Wolves side with one point all season.

2. This was already a game that offered the chance to lay down a significant marker, but now the potential for a genuinely significant move in the title race that we weren’t entirely sure Liverpool were even really in despite their position at the top of the table.

After this win, they can even afford to lose at Arsenal next weekend and remain above a team nobody doubts is in that race.

3. As for what this hard-fought, occasionally tetchy 2-1 win for Liverpool actually tells us about the season as a whole, there probably wasn’t quite enough from either side to draw any firm conclusions. But we don’t think it’s mere confirmation bias to suggest it hardens what we already thought about both sides’ season-long prospects: that, yes, Liverpool have had a relatively kind fixture list but are at worst the third best team in the country and that a much-improved and still improving Chelsea are still some way short of the three current leading Barclays lights but are absolutely in the conversation for fourth.

4. As Steven Chicken noted, this was a slightly strange game in which Chelsea got a lot right but never really looked like they truly believed they could pinch it, while Liverpool did that Champion’s Thing of beating a major rival without ever quite looking like they were at their absolute best.

5. The first half was a bit odd, really. Not so much a cohesive 45-minute whole as a series of superficially contentious or controversial incidents all of which resulted in the correct decision being reached.

The first such moment came when Tosin cynically and pretty guilelessly dragged down Diogo Jota as he burst into Chelsea’s half. Yellow card was the verdict, and rightly so. The inevitable comparisons will be made with William Saliba’s red-card offence yesterday, but there really isn’t much need to trouble ourselves unduly here. This was not the same, with plenty of covering defenders and far less clarity about whether the chance would end in a goal.

It was a clumsier challenge, though, with Tosin ending up landing on top of Jota and seemingly winding the Liverpool man. He carried on for a bit but was substituted before half-time.

6. There then came three big penalty decisions. The first was correctly not given as Mo Salah left a leg dangling in hope of contact that never came. The second was correctly awarded after Levi Colwill swung clumsily in the general direction of a ball Curtis Jones was struggling to bring under full control, and made contact only with the Liverpool midfielder’s shins. Full marks to Colwill for the show of wide-eyed disbelief he mustered after the penalty was given, but he must have known.

7. Then came the trickiest one. The penalty given on the field and then taken away by VAR after Jones again found himself in on goal only to be sent somersaulting by Robert Sanchez.

It was a curious little clash all round. Fundamentally, both men appeared surprised by the other. Jones was decelerating into the challenge, seemingly expecting the keeper to get there first. Sanchez, meanwhile, was making himself big to potentially block a shot that never actually came. The result was a block tackle that neither man expected to be a block tackle.

Sanchez got there first and that contact on the ball saved him entirely. Generally speaking, we’re firmly in the new school that says contacting the ball doesn’t necessarily remove all possibility of a foul, and that it doesn’t give anyone the right to commit any kind of assault in the immediate aftermath.

But equally that doesn’t mean that any contact after getting the ball equals a foul, because that way madness lies. It’s fair to say Sanchez was a touch fortunate to get away with a misjudgement, because it was more by luck than judgement that he got the ball before making contact with Jones, but that contact was always largely unavoidable and there are obvious and valid reasons why the body shape a keeper will adopt in these incidents will differ from a defender’s.

8. On the back of John Stones’ winner at Wolves, that completed a bulging collection of big moments and big decisions, all of which were settled correctly and that therefore absolutely definitely won’t generate any kind of noise and nonsense of the coming days. So that’s nice, isn’t it?

9. Mo Salah converted his penalty emphatically, albeit not quite as dramatically as Peter Drury suggested because we’re pretty sure no human ever could, but Liverpool could still probably consider themselves a mite fortunate to lead at the break.

Their attacking play had lacked its usual snap, while at the back Andy Robertson was having a terrible time trying to get to grips with Noni Madueke. Chelsea threatened but never quite managed to wrest full control of midfield, with Liverpool indebted to the tireless work of the man who would prove their matchwinner in the second half, Curtis Jones.

10. Chelsea could easily have gone in level, with their best chance of the half coming right at its conclusion after the second Liverpool penalty had been overturned. Madueke once again got the better of Robertson down Chelsea’s right-hand side and teed up Cole Palmer

It was a difficult and quiet day for Chelsea’s most obvious attacking threat, and this was the one moment where he had clear space and time to do something significant. Such has been his recent level that it was a surprise to see him bend the ball over rather than under Caoimhin Kelleher’s crossbar.

The game flew into life with a riotous start to the second half in which two entirely inadequate offside traps were exposed to great cost. First Ibrahima Konate’s go-go gadget leg played Nicolas Jackson comfortably onside despite an on-field flag from an official who presumably and understandably didn’t quite believe a human leg could be quite that length.

Jackson, so often criticised for the unrefined nature of his finishing, tucked this chance neatly into the bottom corner.

11. Liverpool’s response to what was only the third goal they’ve conceded all season was almost instantaneous and added fuel to the idea that they always had extra gears they could find if needed, gears Chelsea perhaps don’t yet have at their disposal.

But Chelsea were architects of their own demise to a large extent with an offside trap that appeared to forget that midfielders exist. Given Jones – a deserved man of the match – had already had such a profound impact on the match, failing to even consider that he might be running from a deeper position while focusing on playing Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo into offside positions.

It was a typically deft ball into the danger area from Salah and an expertly timed run from the excellent Jones, but it shouldn’t have ripped Chelsea so entirely asunder.

12. Having been guilty perhaps of slowness of thought, execution or both in the moments before the two first-half penalty incidents, there could be no such criticism here of Jones, whose first touch was good enough and his finish flicked across Sanchez into the far corner inventive and precise.

Again, though, there are questions to ask of the goalkeeper here. Was he slow to sense the danger? Gun-shy after that narrow escape with the earlier clash between these two players? Who can say for sure, but the outcome was the same no matter what the cause. He didn’t get close enough to smother Jones’ chance at source but nor was he in any kind of position to make a save if Jones did this time get any kind of shot away.

This will be the frustration for Chelsea in a game of such fine margins; that while Jones did absolutely everything right in sniffing out and taking the decisive chance, from run to touch to finish, he was undeniably assisted at every turn by some curious decisions from the visiting defence.

13. Enzo Maresca’s response was immediate but perhaps too hasty. A triple change in which Renato Veiga, Benoit Badiashile and Enzo Fernandez replaced Reece James, Tosin and Romeo Lavia was not one to cause wild disruption, but Chelsea never quite recovered their rhythm.

Badiashile and Fernandez for Tosin and Lavia were straight swaps. And while Veiga for James required Malo Gusto to switch flanks it was also perhaps the most likely second-half change Chelsea would make. It was very possibly pre-planned. However welcome a sight it was to see James back in action and in such a big game, it was never likely to be a 90-minute effort.

Veiga had a couple of eye-catching forays in his early minutes, but Chelsea were a largely disjointed side as they chased the game, with Liverpool’s grip on the game growing tighter as the clock ticked down.

It never truly felt like Chelsea were going to get back on terms a second time.

14. Really, though, it was only in those final shooting positions where Liverpool’s superiority felt clear. That’s significant, obviously, because shooting and being clinical when the chances come is kind of important, but it does point to a Chelsea side that, for all the propensity for off-field chaos, has reason to think that things are starting to come together.

Here they really did match Liverpool for long periods in all other aspects of the game. Had they shown a touch more composure in their better moments, or managed to force Kelleher into having to deal with more than two of their 12 attempts it might all have been very different.

15. It’s enough, though, for Chelsea to leave with optimism to go with the frustration. They could not have gone toe-to-toe like this with Liverpool last season. That they are able to do so at such an early stage under such an inexperienced manager is a hugely encouraging sign and one that not many would have expected to see eight games into another Chelsea reset.

Chelsea’s wild approach to, well, pretty much everything might not be to everyone’s tastes, but it’s hard to argue too loudly with the current efforts of the manager and players. Maresca does deserve credit for bringing some semblance of order to the chaos that swirls at Stamford Bridge and to be able to turn out performances like this that, even in defeat, offer much encouragement for the months ahead. It took the far more experienced Mauricio Pochettino far longer to get his head around it all.

16. But we can only finish on Liverpool. It’s a massive win on a massive weekend to start a run of games that is tremendously exciting if a tiny bit terrifying at the same time.

They sit top of the table and have won 10 of their first 11 games under a manager handed the task, exciting but difficult in so many different ways, of following a legend. At the very, very least Slot now has the breathing space needed to get through the upcoming fixture list as it takes its turn toward the brutal. He has his feet under the table and the chance of success. Really, it is all any manager can ask for when handed the task of replacing someone who did so much and meant so much here as Jurgen Klopp.

It would have been neither surprise nor disgrace for this to be a season of transition and discovery for Liverpool, but it now has the potential to be so much more. By this time next week they could be seven points clear of Arsenal, which really would be something.