ANLAYSIS: Liverpool were beaten by Arsenal at Anfield on Sunday and some of the stats suggest they were miles off - but a deep dive shows that the Reds aren't a million miles away

Liverpool's losses at Anfield are rare, but Andoni Iraola has already presided over two in the early stages of his tenure after Arsenal left with all three points.

The most damning stat of the day as the failure from the hosts to even register a shot of target - the first time that has happened in the Premier League.

And whilst that may paint a picture of a team who perhaps didn't show up, and if they did one that clearly lacked ideas, the reality is actually quite different. 52 touches in the penalty area for Liverpool; 18 for Arsenal. 56 penalty area entries (passes or carries) for Liverpool; 18 for Arsenal. 27 crosses for Liverpool (excluding corners); eight for Arsenal. And, of course, no goals for Liverpool; one for Arsenal.

It was another endorsement for the Arsenal's defensive qualities, but showed that Liverpool are not a million miles away from the country's top team at present.

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However the loss still leaves them nine points behind the leaders after nine games played, but a closer look at the numbers and the performance actually provides some solace for Iraola.

Attack vs defence

If Liverpool are due any criticism, it is undoubtedly for an appalling first quarter of an hour which culminated in a tap-in at the back post for Arsenal striker Kai Havertz - an early lead, but one which eventually proved insurmountable.

With 19-year-old Trey Nyoni handed his first Premier League start ahead of the out-of-form Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai, who made his return from a hamstring injury in the second half, the Reds started poorly - and the youngster was, unfortunately, at the centre of it.

Somehow escaping even one yellow card despite two rugged fouls in the first 10 minutes, Nyoni appeared somewhat cowed by the occasion at first, but the uncertainty was by no means his alone.

Liverpool were caught between two stools far too often in the opening stages. Without full commitment to the press, Arsenal were given space, and despite it taking 15 minutes for the game to produce its first shot, Declan Rice's blazed effort over the bar proved to be a warning.

Less than a minute later, it was Havertz who connected with Rice's low delivery to put Arsenal ahead; and, at that stage of proceedings, the champions were playing like it. Liverpool were reeling.

Up until Havertz's goal, the Reds saw just 31.5% of possession, winning three of their 10 ground duels and completing just 63.2% of their passes - failing to get any sort of a foothold in the game.

By the time the ball hit the back of the net at the end of a move in which at least five Liverpool players lost focus - starting with Alisson's awful pass and ending with a mix-up of marking between Ronald Araujo, Jeremy Jacquet and Virgil van Dijk - the Reds had already been forced into six clearances.

The game plan from the visitors was clear - get an early goal and hold out, making use of counter-attacks to kill Liverpool off. That proved tricky, but the first two parts of Arteta's plan were executed perfectly.

Though Liverpool roared back and proceeded to dominate the remainder of the first half, crucially shutting off Arsenal's counter-attacking threat after a few hairy moments up until around the half-hour mark, the Gunners' rearguard dealt with everything the Reds could throw at them.

Between the goal and half time, Liverpool saw 66.4% of possession, won 61.5% of the duels and took eight shots to Arsenal's three. Vitally, these attacks were sustained: while the Reds made 27.8% of their recoveries in the attacking half, Arsenal - reduced to booting 15.8% of their passes long - did so just 6.3% of the time.

Part of why Liverpool found it easier to play out from the back after the goal was a tweak to Nyoni's position in build-up. Rather than dropping between the two centre-backs, as he has in recent starts against Chelsea and Villarreal, Nyoni instead dropped in to the left of Van Dijk in deeper areas.

This reduced the pressure the No. 42 faced on the ball and opened up more promising angles for him to split Arsenal's lines with his sharp passing - only van Dijk matched him for line-breaking passes (19: Fotmob) despite Nyoni coming off with half an hour left to play.

It was only Van Dijk who produced more final third entries than Nyoni (11), too. The former Leicester City academy player moved the ball quickly and intelligently - requiring just 61 touches to complete 96.4% of his 56 passes, a total number of passes higher than all but three other Liverpool players, all of whom finished the full 90 minutes.

Needless to say, for all that Liverpool improved, it did not result in Arsenal keeper David Raya being tested. Florian Wirtz took the most shots (three), but both of his open play efforts in the second half were blocked - and the closest he or any Liverpool player came to equalising was an opportunistic free kick off the bar.

The German was unable to create a chance, but - on this occasion - it was not for the lack of getting into dangerous areas. Only Bradley Barcola (16) made more touches in the opposition box than Wirtz's seven, but the Frenchman was similarly ineffective in the key moments and lost possession 21 times - seven more than the next closest Liverpool player.

With space at a premium, Barcola struggled to stretch his legs, while the opposite winger - Cody Gakpo - was reduced to a wide support role, lumping eight crosses into the area to little effect, while Milos Kerkez on the left produced the same figure.

With Arsenal dropping deeper and deeper, Alexander Isak got more involved in the game and was a competitive presence, winning five of his nine duels (including three of five aerial duels), but just three of his 25 touches were in the box.

Liverpool clearly attempted to bombard their way home with crosses. Kerkez actually finished the game as Liverpool's top chance creator (three), but was responsible for a horribly shanked effort at the end of one of the clearest openings the Reds produced.

Alexis Mac Allister was probably Liverpool's best player on the day, covering the most distance and making the most defensive contributions (Fotmob), alongside his energetic attacking work - but he was responsible for missing Liverpool's only big chance of the afternoon, a header that sailed over the bar in the 43rd minute.

When Liverpool did carve out rare opportunities, they were unable to make them count. Even so, the 'no shots on target' statistic which I led with doesn't tell the entire story.

All nine of Liverpool's blocked shots looked well-directed, and required Arsenal bodies to block them. Sometimes, you have to just tip your hat to high-quality defending. With 18 clearances in the first half alone, this was a defensive performance of the utmost resilience from Arsenal.

Nyoni sub jettisons momentum

Liverpool, to their collective credit, never stopped pushing in this game. Despite Arsenal getting body parts to anything even remotely goal-bound, there were precious few periods in this game after the goal when it felt like the Reds wouldn't score the next one, if anyone would.

However, the longest period in which that felt less certain was after Nyoni was substituted for the returning Szoboszlai. Strangely enough, though, it wasn't even that this was an especially poor performance from the Hungary captain.

In just half an hour or so on the pitch, Szoboszlai made 10 final third entries (third for Liverpool behind van Dijk and Nyoni), created a chance and won possession five times, second only to Mac Allister who played a full hour more than the No. 8.

Replacing Nyoni, given his influence, was understandable if unfortunate, with the youngster never having previously started twice in a week - but the substitution was made more odd by Iraola's comments after the final whistle.

"I decided to finish [the game] with Rio Ngumoha, with Victor Munoz and put in Dominik Szoboszlai to see if we could maybe from one shot outside the box, to score in different ways," Iraola said during his post-match duties.

"We've had a lot of set-pieces but we haven't been able to score from there and also they've been very good defensively in the second half."

Given Szoboszlai's repertoire of long-range rockets, this reasoning makes sense - but what makes less sense was the position Szoboszlai took up on the field.

Rather than pushing Mac Allister into his typical, holding role, Szoboszlai was essentially a like-for-like swap with Nyoni positionally, supporting with deep build-up and attempting to influence the game from further back.

This, sadly, was completely ineffective. The crowbar to Nyoni's lockpick, Szoboszlai's introduction saw Liverpool more than double their percentage of passes played long (6.0% after the break before the substitution to 12.5% after) - the Hungarian responsible for seven of these, only two of which found their target.

Nyoni played roughly double the minutes of Szoboszlai but produced nearly four times as many line-breaking passes as Szoboszlai's five (Fotmob), with the Hungarian also guilty of chewing on the ball at times - finishing with a less-economical 41 touches for his 33 passes.

Prior to the sub in the second half, Liverpool had seen 74.0% of possession and completed 84.5% of their passes; after the sub, those percentages dropped to 50.9% and 78.9%.

It was a calculated gamble from Iraola and it did eventually result in a further seven shots for Liverpool, six of them from inside the area, but it did not pay off - and Arsenal closed Szoboszlai down effectively whenever he started to think about winding up one of his speciality efforts.

Effectively, Iraola sacrificed control for a more chaotic, 'moment of magic'-focused approach - entirely true to his principles, but the wrong decision for this game - and even this made little sense with Szoboszlai starting so far from goal.

Only one of Liverpool's 19 recoveries after the sub came in the attacking half, after making five attacking half recoveries in the rest of the game up until that point - making it increasingly difficult for the Reds to sustain attacks.

The pressure returned in the closing stages - 54.4% of the action playing out in Arsenal's defensive third in the 15 minutes leading up to 90' - but in the middle 15 minutes of the second half, as the team adapted to Szoboszlai and Rio's introductions, Liverpool let the Gunners off the hook.

Between Isak's off-target effort in the 56th minute and van Dijk's long-range, blocked shot in the 75th, Arsenal had four shots to Liverpool's one. Though the scoresheet remained the same, these moments of reprieve may well be the ultimate reason the visitors were able to hold out for the clean sheet.

With no other midfielders in the squad who can offer similar qualities to Nyoni, Iraola has a major issue to contend with. Here, the youngster literally made himself irreplaceable.

Game state and the referee

It is possible to believe that Liverpool could have been better, and yet also criticise what was a very questionable refereeing performance from Andy Madley and his assistants, both on the field and at Stockley Park.

Having decided to spare my sanity by avoiding wading into the discussion on play-acting, timewasting, gamesmanship and the mysterious, mystical, ever-changing threshold for yellow cards - believe me, though, I screamed enough bloody murder over this during the game - there is one decision which made an impact on the game which cannot be overstated.

The inaction of the entire refereeing team and VAR Stuart Attwell when Isak was pulled by Jurrien Timber 21 minutes into the game, mid-leap as he attempted to connect with a cross from Barcola, had a lasting effect on how this game played out.

Had that infringement, as even Ian Wright argued on live coverage, been given as the penalty it clearly should have been, Liverpool likely would have equalised and Arsenal would have been forced to reassess their approach.

And should the penalty have been given, having made no attempt to play the ball, would Timber not have been culpable of of a deliberate denial of a goalscoring opportunity and therefore the recipient of a red card?

The reason I have left this point until last is because, ultimately, there are more important factors behind this result - namely, the much more professional and effective level of box defending Arsenal produced for the rest of this game, and the dip in momentum that resulted after what initially looked like the sensible substitution of Nyoni.

Given the limited attacking threat Arsenal posed after scoring, a red card would likely have made little difference to their backs-to-the-wall approach, only perhaps limiting their ambitions to escaping with a point rather than a narrow victory.

But after yet another high-profile Premier League clash has been swayed by a blunder of officiating, it is impossible to ignore that this is an issue that cannot continue.

John Aldridge used his column this week to demand change, and there will be few supporters of any club in the league that seriously disagree with him - even Arsenal can feel aggrieved that Nyoni was not issued at least one yellow card for his early infractions.

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It is a problem that makes assessing games like this feel less meaningful. There was a time when a referee missing a foul against your team was seen as part of the game but, with VAR into its eighth season in the Premier League (has it only been eight years?!), it has grown increasingly difficult to defend mistakes like this.

And after the year Liverpool have had, and the gradual improvement we've seen under Iraola so far, is it so wrong to be frustrated that this match was not decided by performances alone?

Liverpool went toe-to-toe with the champions here, and once again looked like they belonged in that environment. Andy Madley and Stuart Attwell did not.