Arsenal strikes once and holds firm at Anfield to beat Liverpool 1-0

It took just one shot on target for Arsenal to walk away from Anfield with all three points. Kai Havertz finished with his left foot from point-blank range in the 15th minute, after a cross from Declan Rice, and that 1-0 scoreline held firm until the final whistle, even as Liverpool pushed for 90 minutes without finding a reward.

The goal started out wide: Rice whipped a low cross into the box, and Havertz, unmarked at the back post, tapped it in by the left post with barely any room to work with. Before that, the game had already seen a warning sign from Rice himself, who fired over the bar from outside the box in the 14th minute off a pass from Christos Tzolis. Arsenal struck first and didn't need much more than that.

From there, the script flipped entirely. Liverpool took control of the ball and started piling up chances without finding the net. Cody Gakpo tested the keeper twice before the half-hour mark, Virgil van Dijk headed wide from a corner, and Ronald Araujo tried a header of his own from another set piece. The clearest chance came in the 38th minute, when Florian Wirtz smashed a direct free kick off the crossbar from a tough angle on the left. It was, probably, as close as the home side came to equalizing in the entire first half.

In the second half, the story didn't change much. Liverpool kept creating through Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Rio Ngumoha, who came off the bench and tested the keeper twice in the closing minutes, but the finishing let them down time and again. Arsenal, meanwhile, settled into defending the lead at a measured pace, using substitutions to rotate in names like Viktor Gyokeres, Mikel Merino and Piero Hincapie without losing their shape at the back. The match grew increasingly heated with cards shown (Jurrien Timber, Alexis Mac Allister, Myles Lewis-Skelly and David Raya among those booked), but the scoreline never budged.

Plenty of ball, not enough finishing

The match stats capture that sense of sterile Liverpool dominance well. The home side had more possession, more shots and more corners, but couldn't turn it into a goal.

According to our post-match xG estimate, calculated from the shots taken in the game, Liverpool generated 1.45 expected goals to Arsenal's 0.99. In other words: the home side built more and better chances in terms of danger created, but in the end the goal went to the team that needed it least.

That contrast runs against what we had projected before the match. In our preview we gave Arsenal a 44% chance of winning, 29% for a draw and 27% for Liverpool, with expected goals of 1.13 for the home side and 1.51 for the visitors. The final result lined up with Arsenal's favorite status on the scoreboard, but the run of play was far more even, and even tilted toward Liverpool in terms of chances created, than those numbers suggested.

In the Premier League table, this result leaves Arsenal on top with 24 points from 9 games played (8 wins, 0 draws, 1 loss), while Liverpool sit in fifth with 15 points from the same number of games (4 wins, 3 draws, 2 losses). The gap between the two sides now stands at 9 points.

For Liverpool, the match leaves the feeling of a job half done: they controlled the ball, created more chances, and even hit the crossbar, but couldn't break down an Arsenal defense that, with just one shot on target all game, still walked away from Anfield with all three points.