Mikel Arteta once described the experience of being overwhelmed at Anfield during his playing days at Everton as a moment of total helplessness. Recalling the 2011 match in an Amazon documentary, he used the Spanish term ‘bajar’ to liken the sensation to a cyclist suddenly losing momentum after a strong start. He described a rapid collapse in form, noting that he was suddenly surrounded by red shirts and could not react, a feeling he identified as the biggest fear of his career. M ikel Arteta used a Spanish word to describe what it felt like to be helpless at Anfield while playing for Everton in 2011: bajar. “It’s when a cyclist is going up and looks amazing, then in one kilometre he goes ‘boom.
Arteta’s history at Anfield remains complex. While he eventually secured a victory there as an Arsenal player in September 2012, the match ended with him hospitalized after a collision with Jordan Henderson. His subsequent efforts to secure a league win at the venue have been fruitless, with Arsenal currently enduring a 13-match winless streak in league visits to Liverpool—a run that matches the club’s worst record at the ground. Their only victory at Anfield during this period occurred in a 2020 League Cup tie decided by penalties. After five failed attempts in the Merseyside derby, but ended up spending the night in hospital with concussion after colliding with Jordan, arteta finally tasted victory there as a player with Arsenal in September 2012. Arteta was part of the Arsenal side that won at Anfield again six months later thanks to goals from the new signings Lukas Podolski and Santi Cazorla.
Previous tactical adjustments have failed to yield results. In 2021, Arteta famously played the Liverpool anthem, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, over training ground speakers to prepare his squad, yet the experiment resulted in a 4-0 defeat. Last season, he faced criticism after a late loss to a Dominik Szoboszlai free-kick, with pundits like Gary Neville questioning the team’s mentality in major away fixtures. Currently, Arsenal heads into Sunday’s match following a disappointing Carabao Cup exit against Fleetwood, a game that saw them struggle despite the inclusion of Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyökeres. Further complicating matters, Bukayo Saka is sidelined with a thigh injury, Noni Madueke is managing an ankle issue, and Max Dowman is suspended. When Dominik Szoboszlai’s late free-kick ended a sequence of three Arsenal draws at Liverpool, for a perceived failure to take off the handbrake, having started Mikel Merino as his No 10, he was criticised after last season’s loss in late August. Especially after Arsenal struggled so badly against a team 84 places below them in the pyramid in a stadium that holds fewer than 6,000 people, arteta will be keen to disprove such perceptions. Presumably in an attempt to lighten the load on Martin Ødegaard, although both look badly out of form, the strikers Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyökeres surprisingly started in tandem at Fleetwood.
Facing these challenges, Arteta may look to the defensive discipline of George Graham, who led Arsenal to a historic 2-0 win at Anfield in 1989 to claim the league title. Graham famously prioritized structural solidity over immediate attacking pressure, an approach that allowed Arsenal to capitalize when the situation demanded. The parallels between the two managers are notable; both were 44 when they secured their first league titles. Graham’s legacy of ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ has seen a revival under Arteta, who has secured 1-0 victories 32 times in the Premier League since December 2019. An assertion that will have hurt Arteta but does have credence: they have not beaten Manchester City in the Premier League at the Etihad since 2015 under Arsène Wenger, gary Neville went as far as to say Arsenal lacked “the mentality to go and win big matches at big away grounds”. He can take inspiration from one of the most famous nights in Arsenal’s history 37 years ago when George Graham’s side arrived at Anfield needing a 2-0 victory to be champions. According to “I told my players to keep things tight in the first half – it was imperative we did not concede,”, Graham in an interview to mark the 20th anniversary of that dramatic finale to the 1988-89 season, when Michael Thom. With that in mind, Arteta’s best chance of beating Liverpool is probably by taking the cautious approach that has served him so well and was the cornerstone of last season’s Premier League title triumph. According to “I told my players to keep things tight in the first half – it was imperative we did not concede,”, Graham in an interview to mark the 20th anniversary of that dramatic finale to the 1988-89 season, when Michael Thomas scored in stoppage time to end Arsenal’s 18-year wait for the title. “The papers were saying we’d have to attack from the off, but I was adamant that was wrong. Before the 1989 game, Arsenal’s players ran to all four corners of the ground to hand flowers to Liverpool fans as a show of sympathy after the Hillsborough disaster the previous month – an idea proposed by their longsta.
Arteta has repeatedly emphasized the importance of collective defensive excellence to improve winning probabilities. Targeting Liverpool’s vulnerabilities from set-pieces—a tactic that proved successful in last weekend’s 2-0 win against Everton—may provide the blueprint needed to secure a result. After returning from a painful penalty shootout loss to Fleetwood, which mirrored the sting of their May Champions League final defeat by Paris Saint-Germain, Arteta’s focus is entirely on reversing this historical trend.
While the Carabao Cup elimination creates a lighter schedule for the remainder of the season, the manager remains intensely focused on the upcoming league test. For Arteta, the only path forward after the frustration at Fleetwood is to mirror the pragmatic, disciplined victory Graham achieved nearly four decades ago. Success on Sunday would not only break a long-standing jinx but would also serve as a definitive response to lingering doubts about his team’s ability to perform in high-pressure away environments.
