A tumultuous seven day period that began with a dire draw against Newcastle United and was followed by the transfer of the Arsenal captain to Barcelona, ended with a 2-0 loss to Liverpool in the Gunners’ first home fixture of the new Barclay’s Premier League season.  It is the first time Liverpool has won at the Emirates Stadium, and the first time they have beaten Arsenal in the past nine meetings.

Arsenal now face an early season must win fixture next weekend against champions Manchester United, where a loss could see them eight points out of the title race by the end of August.

The Incredible Shrinking Squad

Following their 1-0 defeat of Udinese in the first-leg of their Champion’s League Playoff, Arsenal headed into Saturday’s game with Liverpool hoping to grab their first victory of the domestic season.  With midfielder Alex Song and forward Gervinho suspended due to separate incidents with Newcastle’s Joey Barton, the Gunner’s went into the match at the Emirates boasting a squad looking extremely thin.

Jack Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs, John Djourou and Tomas Rosicky missed the contest through injury.  With Arsenal not making any additions to the squad during the past week through the transfer window, young defender Carl Jenkinson and promising midfielder Emmanuel Frimpong got their first Premier League starts.

Incredibly, due to suspensions and injuries, Arsene Wenger was forced to start want away midfielder Samir Nasri, who played the entire 90 minutes.

First Half Offers Little Excitement

The match started slowly, with no real events until Frimpong received a yellow card in the 8^th minute for preventing Liverpool from taking a quick throw-in.  I’m torn in my analysis of this, because had he not prevented the throw, Liverpool’s Dirk Kuyt would have been running free down the touchline and may have been able to create a scoring chance for the Reds.  Frimpong prevented the quick restart, and thus the breakaway.  The problem was it was too early in the game for a defensive midfielder to get a yellow.  Arsenal, yet to score in the Premier League this season, could not afford to go down to 10 men.

In the 14^th minute the injury crisis worsened for the Gunners, with defender Laurent Koscielny going to ground with back spasms.  He was replaced by 18 year old Spanish defender Ignasi Miquel, fresh off winning the 2011 Under-19 European Championship with Spain.

Few chances were created by either side in the first half.  Liverpool’s best chance came from an Andy Carroll header that was well saved by Wojciech Szczesny.  Arsenal only came close through a shot by Frimpong after his rampaging run up the pitch.

Second Half:  Seeing Red

The second half started much like the first, with little in the way of excitement.  However, everything changed in the 69^th minute when Frimpong picked up his second yellow of the match for leaving his foot in after missing a ball played by Charlie Adam.

The red card was the eighth received by an Arsenal player since the start of the 2010-11 campaign.  That is the most by any team in the Premier League.

The Gunners, who didn’t look as if they were going to score in the contest up until that point, were down to ten men for the second time in two Premier League matches this season.  The red card also coincided with Liverpool introducing Uruguayan Luis Suarez.  The two moves would combine to seal Arsenal’s fate on this day.

Liverpool scored in the 77^th minute after an own goal by Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsey.  Ramsey, who otherwise had a forgettable game, had an Ignasi Miquel clearance careen off his chest and into the Arsenal goal.

The play was the result of build-up play by Liverpool’s Suarez and substitute Raul Miereles.  Suarez appeared to be offside when Meireles attempted a through ball, which Miquel handled.  It was hard luck for the Gunners that Ramsey was standing directly in the path of the clearance.  Arsenal’s Polish keeper never had a chance to keep it out of the net.

Suarez scored Liverpool’s second goal after a brilliant play that saw him finish a well paced pass from Meireles again, which rolled just out of the reach of Thomas Vermaelen’s outstretched leg.

Two goals and one man down, that goal finished off the Gunners on this afternoon.

The Good

Despite the youth and inexperience in the squad, some of Arsenal’s young players showed promise.  Miquel, who replaced Koscielny, played well in his 76 minutes.  The own goal he was involved in was hard luck.  The young Spaniard, who captained the reserve side last campaign, showed he is a capable defender for Arsenal.  He will need to work on his tackling at this level, as he was successful in only four of his nine attempts.

Emmanuel Frimpong, the young 19 year old midfielder, showed both his immense promise and his younth and inexperience today.  Frimpong won five of six tackles during his 69 minutes of action, and intercepted four passes.  He also had a great run at the Liverpool goal in the first-half, which saw Jose Reina have to make a decent save to keep Frimpong’s shot out.  At times, Frimpong looked like the next Michael Essien.

The problem for Frimpong is he has to get himself under control.  There were several opportunities for the referee to give Frimpong a second yellow card, and finally the young midfielder left the man in charge no choice.  Frimpong will be important for Arsenal this campaign, so he needs to be able to stay on the pitch.  The red card will now mean he will miss the clash in eight days with Manchester United.  Frimpong, Song, and Gervinho will all miss that fixture through suspension.

Thomas Vermaelen was everywhere for the Gunners on this day.  Vermaelan, who completed 46 of 52 passes (88%), also had 11 clearances, one block and held Englishmen Andy Carroll in check throughout the match.  The only real scoring chance Carroll generated was his early header, at which time he out leapt Miquel.  TV5 was able to win nearly every aerial battle he attempted in the match.  His presence at the back was desperately missed last season for Arsenal.

The Bad

Arsenal has now won just one of their last nine Premier league games, and just two of their last 13.  Should Manchester United win their fixture on Monday against Sp*rs, Arsenal will already be five points behind the Red Devils through two rounds, with a head-to-head clash happening on August 28^th at Old Trafford.

This game will not be a confidence builder for Arsenal heading to Italy on Wednesday for their crucial match with Udinese.  The Gunners head into the second leg holding a 1-0 advantage, with the advantage of keeping a clean sheet at home.

It will be more troubling if defender Laurent Koscielny misses that contest through injury.  With Alex Song only suspended domestically, I’d like to see him at center back if Koscielny is unavailable.

Arsenal has now played two domestic league games without scoring.  The Gunners have also generated few scoring chances up to this point.  The lack of offense continues to be troubling.  With no real playmaker brought into the team yet to replace Cesc Fabregas, this could become a theme for this campaign.  The Gunners were able to complete just 79% of their passes.  Though it was the same percentage as Liverpool, we expect Arsenal to be able to complete more passes with their short, intricate passing game.  There were few multi pass connections or build-ups on this day for Arsenal.

Defensively, Arsenal won just 32 of 58 attempted tackles, and were only successful on 23 of 36 clearance attempts.

The Ugly

With the squad hit hard by injuries, there is a legitimate chance that the Gunners may miss out on the Champion’s League group stage.   If that happens, it is rumored that the possible transfer in of Lille midfielder Eden Hazard will not happen, as Hazard wants Champion’s League football.

This may be a pattern if the Gunners are knocked out Wednesday.  Not having direct qualification to the group stage has likely stifled some of the transfer movement Arsene Wenger has wanted to complete.  Top quality players don’t want to play in the Europa League, and it would seem the question of whether or not Arsenal will continue in the Champion’s League would hinder quality signings.

I’ve seen rumors that of the Fabregas transfer fee from Barcelona, Arsenal have only received £13 million of it upfront.  If so, that is poor business as the Gunners were not able to more quickly complete a quality signing for his replacement.

My biggest worry is missing the group stage will cause the Arsenal board to keep the Fabregas money to offset the loss of profits from missing Champion’s League football.  If so, the addition of Hazard won’t happen.  My hope was that a win today against Liverpool would provide a springboard into the contest on Wednesday, but unfortunately that was not the case.

Man of the Match

The Man of the Match for me today was Thomas Vermaelen.  As I stated early, Vermaelen was all over the pitch for Arsenal and kept Andy Carroll in his back pocket until Carroll was removed in the 70^th minute.  Vermaelen’s effort was especially impressive having lost his central defending partner, Koscielny, so early in the contest.  The Belgian partnered with the young 18 year-old Spaniard Miquel and was able to cover for most mistakes the young defender made.  Vermaelen will need another great performance on Wednesday if Arsenal is to continue in the Champion’s League.

FORWARD

It’s still too early in the campaign to write off the Gunners, but this squad needs reinforced in the worst way.  Chants of “Spend some (expletive) money” could be heard ringing through the Emirates Stadium and Arsene Wenger needs to do just that.  It’s imperative Arsenal advance on Wednesday night, so that top quality players want to come to North London.

The August fixture list has not been kind to the Gunners, as a trip to Old Trafford is up next domestically.  Arsenal, with just one point from six, needs a result in that fixture desperately.

This will be a telling week for Arsenal’s 2011/12 season.

Follow Jimmy Gossard on Twitter @JimmyGossard

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