The overriding feeling I have this morning is one of frustration.

Frustration that we didn’t remove the hoodoo of not winning at Anfield.

Frustration that we didn’t make a solid first half a great second.

Frustration at the injuries.

Frustration at a prevailing media narrative that ‘Arsenal got what they deserved’, like we didn’t cancel out Liverpool as much as they did to us, but I can just avoid the journos today and for the next few days I think.

Arsenal came to Anfield yesterday without Kai Havertz, without Bukayo Saka, with Martin Odegaard clearly not fit. Christian Norgaard and Ben White also didn’t make the match day squad and in the warm up we had William Saliba twist his ankle we found out in Arteta’s post match. He lasted just four minutes. The positive was that Christian Mosquera did not put a foot wrong and seeing him look comfortable at Anfield cannot be underestimated. This kid looks very good and whereas in season’s past an injury to Saliba means a big step down (remember the Rob Holding days?) in class, the gulf doesn’t seem as much now and if he’s out for a small spell, hopefully we have a guy who will minimise any damage. The good news is that there’s an international break now and if we have Saliba sat at home for a week to get over that twisted ankle, then that’s fine by me, so hopefully it’s nothing serious and we can have him back soon.

As Mosquera proved that we can have able deputies, so did Noni Madueke, who I thought was our best attacking player yesterday and caused Kerkez plenty of problems. He is so rapid and clearly one of our tactics was to try to exploit the space in behind the Liverpool fullbacks, because we distributed from deep on a few occasions and Madueke almost got in a couple of times. I like what I see from him and the step down from Bukayo Saka is obviously there, but Madueke makes us better in the absence of Saka.

On the other side, however, we do have to start talking about Gabriel Martinelli, because his performance left little to be excited about. I think the general consensus amongst Arsenal fans is that he’s out of form and isn’t delivering, but we’re getting close to the period in which you can see him losing his spot on a more regular basis. He didn’t really ever look to get beyond Szoboszlai, he ran down a few blind alleys and I’m surprised that Arteta left him on the pitch as much as he did. I think most Arsenal fans are like me; we’re desperate to see the Martinelli from three season’s ago, but the reality is that he hasn’t looked like that player for some time. He didn’t have a great pre season and yesterday felt like it was Arteta saying “you normally do well at Anfield, so show me how good you are – here’s your chance”. Martinelli didn’t take it and when he was replaced by Eze on 70 minutes we saw more from the England international in his cameo than we did from the Brazilian. With Trossard also a guy who is more likely to be playing that position on the left, plus the fact he looked impressive when he came on against Leeds last weekend, Martinelli is going to find himself third or fourth in the pecking order based on performances like yesterday.

The game overall, however, felt very tetchy and tense from both sides. It felt like two heavyweights doing a little bit of shadow boxing at times, with neither team wanting to really have a go and expose each other. Apparently it was one of the lowest xG games in Premier League history and I can believe that; there were not many chances created and neither attack really clicked. So a 0-0 draw was probably the right result, until Szoboszlai hit that free kick from 30 years away. Fantastic hit, fantastic goal, that’s the fine margins difference that decided a tight game and I think even Arne Slot said that if this game is played 10 times it probably ends in a draw eight out of those times. But this was that one outlier and we go home with nothing.

What we can say, however, is that we are a very good team and we will get better and I am certainly choosing to take positives this morning. We played a full strength Liverpool team away from home with some of our best players missing and we easily matched Liverpool. We went for the physicality side of the game with Merino instead of Odegaard and I thought in that first half we edged the duels. Liverpool came back a bit more and we lost a few more 50-50s, but we still held Liverpool at bay and really restricted their chance creation. They are seen as the best team in the league and we managed to keep them at bay. Zubimendi was once again excellent and I thought Calafiori and Timber played well too. Gyokeres was nullified, but in a game like that at Anfield that’s probably always going to happen.

We got done yesterday, but that is probably the hardest away ground to go to and we were equals with the Champions. I think we have to take the positives from that and it’s what I’m choosing to do this morning. It doesn’t help that we now have a poxy international break just as the new season is starting to kick in, but there’s not a lot we can do with it. Arteta will take a look at the result, he’ll take a look at what we could have perhaps done in an attacking sense (because I certainly think there are some lessons to learn there, then hopefully we’ll come back stronger at home to a Nottingham Forest side who lost 3-0 at home to West Ham yesterday.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts. But if you’d like to get a little more of a review, we did a Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday which you can check out here.