Arteta urged to follow George Graham blueprint as Arsenal head to Anfield on Sunday
Mikel Arteta can draw on George Graham’s 1989 Arsenal side as his team prepare to visit Anfield to face Liverpool on Sunday, five days after being eliminated from the Carabao Cup by Fleetwood.
Arsenal have not won at Anfield for 13 league matches, equalling the club’s worst run there. Arteta has publicly described a feeling of helplessness at Anfield from his playing days at Everton in 2011, using the Spanish word bajar and saying: “It’s when a cyclist is going up and looks amazing, then in one kilometre he goes ‘boom’ and he’s struggling again,” in Amazon’s All or Nothing documentary.
Arteta finally recorded a win at Anfield as a player with Arsenal in September 2012 after five failed attempts in the Merseyside derby, but spent the night in hospital with concussion after colliding with Jordan Henderson and called the incident “the biggest fear of my life”. He was part of the Arsenal side that won there again six months later with goals from Lukas Podolski and Santi Cazorla; that was the last time the club triumphed at Anfield in the Premier League. Arsenal’s sole victory at Liverpool in the intervening period came in the League Cup on penalties in 2020, on Arteta’s second visit as a manager.
Preparations for Anfield have included experiments that backfired: in November 2021 Arteta played You’ll Never Walk Alone over the training-ground speakers and the visit resulted in a 4-0 defeat. Last season’s late-August loss at Anfield, decided by Dominik Szoboszlai’s late free-kick which ended a sequence of three draws there, prompted criticism of Arteta for starting Mikel Merino as his No 10. Gary Neville said Arsenal lacked “the mentality to go and win big matches at big away grounds”, and the article notes the club have not beaten Manchester City in the Premier League at the Etihad since 2015 under Arsène Wenger.
The Carabao Cup exit at Fleetwood — a team 84 places below Arsenal whose ground holds fewer than 6,000 — has added to concerns. Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyökeres started together at Fleetwood, ostensibly to ease the burden on Martin Ødegaard, and the piece describes both forwards as looking badly out of form. Bukayo Saka is out with a thigh injury, there are concerns over Noni Madueke’s ankle and Arsenal’s failed appeal over Max Dowman’s red card rules the teenager out for three matches.
Tactically, the article argues Arteta’s best route is a cautious approach similar to last season’s, which it describes as the cornerstone of Arsenal’s Premier League title triumph. Since taking charge in December 2019 he has overseen 1-0 victories 32 times in the Premier League, more than any club apart from Everton. Arsenal scored their first set-piece goal of the season in a routine 2-0 home win over Everton last Saturday, and the report suggests targeting Liverpool’s vulnerability from set plays while keeping possession and defending tightly could be effective against a side that have been finding their feet under Andoni Iraola in recent weeks. “Collectively, we acknowledge the importance of defending,” said Arteta last year. “We know that if we excel in that part of the game, the chances and the probabilities to win more matches is going to be very, very high.”
The 1988–89 finale provides the historical template cited: George Graham’s team arrived at Anfield needing a 2-0 win to be champions, and Graham said: “I told my players to keep things tight in the first half – it was imperative we did not concede.” He added: “The papers were saying we’d have to attack from the off, but I was adamant that was wrong. If Liverpool had scored an early goal it would have been over. But they did very little attacking and played into our hands.” Before that game Arsenal players ran to all four corners of the ground to hand flowers to Liverpool fans in sympathy after the Hillsborough disaster the previous month, an idea proposed by the club director Ken Friar, who died this month.
Graham and Arteta were both 44 when they won their first league titles, the article recalls, and it notes Graham’s background as a former Scotland midfielder who scored almost 80 goals for Arsenal and helped them win the Double in 1971. The piece also records Graham’s reputation for defensive emphasis and the association of the phrase “1-0 to the Arsenal” with his teams.
Arsenal flew back to London after losing to Fleetwood on penalties in a shootout the article says will have revived memories of May’s Champions League final defeat by Paris Saint-Germain. The Carabao Cup has stretched Arteta’s squad in the past two seasons — reaching the semi-finals then the final — and, the piece concludes, for Arteta the only way to respond to what it describes as the most embarrassing night of his managerial career will be to follow in Graham’s footsteps on Sunday when Arsenal visit Anfield to face Liverpool, managed by his childhood friend Andoni Iraola.