Were Arsenal fans excited about the return of Alexis Sánchez? Yes. Were they dismayed when it turned out to be at the expense of Alexandre Lacazette? You bet. Much had been written and said about the performance of Liverpool’s front three after the performance against Hoffenheim in midweek. Here was Arsène Wenger’s chance to fight fire with fire by selecting a fairly nifty front three of his own. Yet instead of going for the obvious option, not to mention the strongest, the ever quirky Arsenal manager chose to bench his new record signing and give Danny Welbeck a game.
It was soon easy to see which front three was going to be busiest, with Mohamed Salah forcing an early save from Petr Cech, Sadio Mané fizzing around like a firework on the left and Roberto Firmino putting his side ahead when Arsenal lost the ball on halfway. Had Jordan Henderson managed to put the ball in the net rather than narrowly wide after dispossessing a dozing Mezut Özil, the German’s savaging at the hands of past and present Liverpool captains this week would have been complete. But Arsenal survived that scare and might have made it to the interval without further damage until Joe Gomez made his second telling interception of the afternoon.
Related: Arsène Wenger hits out at ‘disastrous’ showing in defeat against Liverpool
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