One victory does not make a season but the dominant Emirates display was a reminder of the champions’ quality
One performance, one result, of course, doesn’t mean that everything is suddenly fine.
Liverpool have been here often enough before this season, particularly in
London, not to believe that the storm has now passed. Nobody should be drawing sweeping conclusions, good or bad, from games against an
Arsenal side that remain wildly inconsistent. But there was perhaps enough in Saturday’s 3-0 win at the Emirates for Liverpool to begin to recover some faith in themselves and their methods.
But first the caveats. When Liverpool won 7-0 at Crystal Palace a week before
Christmas, the feeling was they had found their rhythm at last, that they had worked through the scratchiness of the early part of the season. It turned out the scratchiness had been the good bit. They didn’t win any of their next five, but then won impressively at
Tottenham and West Ham, where
Mohamed Salah scored one of the season’s great goals. Blip over? It had barely begun: they lost six of their next seven in the league. So, however dominant they were against Arsenal, it’s probably worth reserving judgment for a while.