Everybody was diving in Liverpool v Arsenal and occasionally some actual football broke out, with the Gunners clearly better.

We also have mails on Man Utd after their latest defeat. Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com

 
Liverpool v Arsenal: Did everybody cheat?
Interested to see what the mailbox has to say about Liverpool’s behaviour. They had clearly been coached to dive in the box, at which point Iraola would put massive pressure on the officials to give a pen.

Gabriel and Mac Alister both went down far too easily after light face contact too but I think it’s the first time I’ve seen such a blatant team strategy to win pens in the PL.

Overall great team effort to control two thirds of the game at Anfield, even if we made too many mistakes on the ball and lacked quality upfront without Saka. Gyokeres doesn’t even look like the player he was last season which is worrying!

Much love.
Simon Cochrane

…I heard the commentator say it was a defensive masterclass from Arsenal, who frustrated Liverpool. Perhaps a better viewpoint would be a falling over masterclass. It seemed that every brush by a Liverpool player on an Arsenal player became a free kick – until the last 5 minutes. Could see Konsa grinning after he had fooled the ref once again.

Funny how they get so righteous as well – guess that comes from their manager.

Arsenal may win the title again, but won’t be loved for it.

And if Fernandez and Martinez wanted to get an example of what putting a real effort in for your teammates, manager and fans looked like – Liverpool provided an example in that game.
Paul McDevitt

…Enough is enough. The PL needs to step up and start issuing bans to players who deliberately overreact to get an opponent sent off. Yes, I know there’s a degree of subjectivity involved in this, but then so are many decisions in football. Jacquet 2 weekends ago against Brentford and now MacAllister against Arsenal. Absolutely blatant playacting and I don’t know anyone who watches PL football who actually wants to see this. 3 game bans will wipe this problem out very quickly.
Rob, Surrey, Bees fan

Liverpool are always being picked on etc
It really is absolutely sickening to watch the only two Liverpool losses this season be so defined by shocking refereeing decisions. Like there’s no fix here, we just have to stomach it and know that an entire title is gone and a huge portion of the drivers of this season are already out of the hands of the actual football team. Honestly, its so so sickening.

Remember Odegaard playing basketball in the Liverpool peno area in Klopp’s last season? And same year Doku kicking Macca in the chest in the 97th min and no pen? What about Kompany wiping Salah out on the halfway line when he was gona be clean thru in 18/19 and staying on the pitch.

You would think I’d be used to title rivals being given huge decisions against pool that leads to direct points. But no, naive as I am i still expect a fair playing field next time…or even……an actual leg up for Liverpool to even things out.

Too bad that never f***ing happens. I literally dare anyone to tell me the head to head game or league title that was potentially swayed pools way due to a ref decision.
Patricio Delo Toro (I waited 3 weeks of an international break for the ref to give City the game, now this)

In truth, Arsenal a cut above
There was a gulf in class between Arsenal and Liverpool and it showed. The Gunners seemed to have all the composure. They certainly sat on their lead but it was all they needed to do, and a magnificent defensive performance is a good way to win a game.

There was some needle but even that seemed to be under their control whereas Liverpool looked to be losing their heads whenever a foul was made.

As for the Reds, it looked a bit too rushed. Balls were floated into the box above everyone bar the goalkeeper, passes were over-hit into the channels so the danger was snuffed out.

But I take comfort from the fact this is a young team and hopefully that ruthlessness will come with time and experience.

I guess it’s up to Brighton now to challenge Arsenal for the title.
Paul in Brussels

…Good watch today nice to see Arsenal get a long sought-after win at Anfield and well played to Liverpool who could easily have come away with something.

Solo parenting this weekend so I watched the game on my phone on silent while pretending to watch Frozen 2. Highly recommend this approach as it makes more a much better watch without hearing all the nauseating pundits rabbiting on. Although I must say the plot of Frozen 2 is very convoluted.

Anticipating lots of moaning about bad tackles and diving Mac Allister from Arsenal fans and a lot of Isak pen chat from Liverpool fans. But in all the back and forward I’d like to poke my head above the parapet and say I really like Liverpool as a club and their fans are usually quite funny. Also Rio looks a great talent.

Let us two great rivals for the “most annnoying fans in the league” moniker all just be a bit friendly and ultimately remember that Man City have been cheating on an industrial scale for 15 years. So we can all sleep soundly knowing they are the real enemy to us all.

Nice one
James

There was always going to be one…
Not a bad assist for a cross-country runner.

Ha.
Michael R

Boring, boring Arsenal
400mill in attacking signings. No shots on target. Boring boring Arsen….

Wait a minute.

Turns out I was right about ManCity. Why argue when you can just wait. Again, zero wins from any serious games. Only convincing win remains against relegation Palace. Couldn’t score against Liverpool until the red. Lost to Arsenal. Lost to PSG. Lost to Brighton. That’s 600 mil spent. Add the 100 mill from January. And that’s a quarter of a billion pounds. No worries though. They are very entertaining and Dave Tickner loves them.
Damola AFC Berlin Germany
P.S long may Bruno’s (and ManUtd’s) downfall continue. What happened last season was a travesty. It wasn’t just a robbery, it was a insulting. Haaland winning it would have been a 100 times better. To deny Rice/Raya/Gabriel player of the season is a crime he will pay for.

You can’t blame Isak
Maybe Isak didn’t go into histrionics because he didn’t think he had been fouled. It’s not up to him, VAR should never need a player to provide some sort of theatre to do the review. It’s comical that folks are blaming Isak, or that there is even a basis to blame Isak.
David

Where is Carrick criticism?
So reading your 16 Conclusions of the Chelsea-Man U game, there’s absolutely no criticism of Carrick, matching the narrative of other media outlets (which is a shame because I usually feel your more outspoken views align with the majority of the fans).

Carrick is still at fault – there is no denying there was a lack of luck in the first half and the players can’t shirk their share, but…

The game was decided at half time when Alonso, a much better tactician, looked at what we were doing (basically still trying to play last year’s football) and changed the system just a little. Suddenly we were being overrun. Or course, we made no such change, because Carrick clearly doesn’t have the ability to do this.

I’m not excusing Martinez (shocking decision making and he shouldn’t play for the club again) but the game was lost as soon as that first goal went in. Chelsea grew into the game as we shrank. Good managers tweak the system in-game. Out of their depth ones stand there and hope something will go their way.

Do better, F365.
Andrew Massey

Stop romanticising Man Utd
A lot of the criticism and the gawping that surrounds Manchester United’s crisis is rooted in the belief – often implicit, sometimes explicit – that this shouldn’t be happening to them.

For this reason it is worth reminding ourselves that this is a club that owes around 90% of its trophy successes to just two coaches, Busby and Ferguson, across two spells of circa 20 years each (give or take).

Sure, there has been the odd pot or pan here and there under other coaches. But it is those two spells combined, totalling around 40 years, that account for the mythology that surrounds the club.

They basically stumbled upon two geniuses of their time, at the right time, with the right level of support behind them, that brought unprecedented levels of success.

But otherwise, the reality is this: this is a football club that has spent around 100 years of its 148-year existence being nothing special at all.

So the romanticising needs to stop, the mythology needs to be put to bed. They do not have a divine right to be good. In fact, arguably what they are right now and have been for the last 14 years is the norm.

Those associated with the club, or whose job it is to write or talk about the club, need to accept this, dump the entitlement, and start showing a little more humility.
Andy H, Swansea

Villa suing Carra is a madness
So I saw the ridiculous comments from Villa’s Nassef Sawiris, saying that they intended to take legal action against Jamie for some comments, which Villa seemed to thing were mean and that ‘Aston Villa will not allow anyone to stop our ascension in English and European football’ which is of course bullsh*t.

Perhaps Carragher should not have told Villa fans to ‘shut the f*** up’ which was childish and unnecessary, but this is the way of the punditocracy these days, where by they have never seem to have anything insightful or educational to say, so default to hyperbole and controversy. Carragher is of course a legendary player for LFC, but I have no time for him as a pundit or podcaster because he’s full of sh*t, much like Neville, Keane et al, but to suggest what he said would affect Villa’s rise in English or European football is nonsense.

I think Sawiris has been giving it the billy big bollocks in threatening legal action and has realised that there would be no way to sue Carragher for stating his opinion and telling some people to shut up, and your article today headlined ‘Jamie Carragher: Aston Villa reach verdict on suing Liverpool icon amid two ‘real reasons’ for legal action’ is quoting The Athletic who suggest Villa are not going to proceed, probably because they realise there would be no case here, and that they look pathetic for threatening it! They have an apology from Carragher but also want ‘action is taken against Carragher by his employers’ which I doubt will happen either as this sort of shit being spouted only increases interest in the podcast in question.

To summarise, a whole load of fuss about nothing which has left Sawiris and Villa looking stupid! I doubt many people would disagree too much with what Carragher said and the way he went about it wasn’t too clever, but I don’t think being too clever is his thing anyway.
A, LFC, Montreal