Liverpool vs Arsenal: Jurgen Klopp's side must take chance to assert their Premier League title credentials

Liverpool's match against Arsenal, much like their season, has taken on a whole new feel as they look to extend their lead at the top of the league before Manchester City play Southampton on Sunday

Suddenly the Premier League table, and the title race, has opened up in front of Liverpool. Manchester City have stumbled and now a look behind Liverpool’s shoulders reveals that Tottenham are their closet challengers, six points back, and City one point behind them.

Now Liverpool’s game with Arsenal at Anfield on Saturday takes on a new feel. Not so much a game that they have to win to keep pace with City, as it might have been one month ago. But a game where a win would turn the screw further on their title rivals. Beat Arsenal and Liverpool will be 10 points ahead of City. And then City’s trip to Southampton on Sunday becomes a game they cannot afford not to win, even before the crunch match at the Etihad next Thursday afternoon.

It is a different sort of pressure of Liverpool, but a welcome one, although of course Klopp did not want to speak about it in these terms in his press conference on Friday. “We didn’t think about the distance between us and other teams, it is too early,” Klopp said. “In the moment, nothing happens.” He even explained how, from the start of the season, Champions League qualification and top four was the target, which might have been just about true at the time but is surely now irrelevant as the talk of 1990, 2009 and 2014 becomes louder and louder.

But Klopp knows that the players cannot get too distracted by that, not yet. Especially when they come up against a difficult opponent today. For years Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal were predictable in their softness, their complacency, their susceptibility to Liverpool’s fast counter-attacks. Last season Liverpool put seven goals past Arsenal in two league games, and seven the season before that too. The last time Liverpool lost to Arsenal, 4-1 in April 2015, was when Brendan Rodgers was still in charge.

Klopp expects a different challenge tomorrow. Because Arsenal are stronger now, and they actually had the better of the 1-1 draw at the Emirates on 3 November. That was a game when Arsenal brought their own intense muscular pressing game, and Liverpool looked the lesser side for portions of it. Klopp admitted how impressed he was with Arsenal that day, and the problems they caused him.

Liverpool: Is it their year? (AP)

“We were not as good as we can be defending-wise,” Klopp said. “I think it was in the period of the Napoli [away] game when we didn’t do too well. We needed this couple of weeks for adjusting a few things, we did that.”

There is something in Unai Emery’s physical style, so successful with Sevilla over the years, that appeals to Klopp’s own sense of how the game should be played. “They are good, strong with the ball and very lively. Their counter-attacks are crazy-quick. [Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang and [Alexandre] Lacazette are a good strike two. Outstanding strikers up front, quick on the wings, a really good team.”

But Klopp has been in charge for more than three years now, and Emery is still in his first few months at Arsenal. Clearly Arsenal are far behind Liverpool in terms of their evolution. In a few years time Emery may have made the same stamp on Arsenal that Klopp has made on Liverpool. But for now, Klopp’s Liverpool are the best team in the country, and they have another chance to reassert that status tomorrow afternoon.