Championship candidates lose points

R OBERTSON 'S DISASTROUS RED CARD

Liverpool were behind twice, right at home. That was understandable: defender Andrew Robertson received a red card quite early. Failing to challenge a relatively harmless ball, Robertson had to commit a foul when he was the last defender. Perhaps Robertson lost concentration because he was still mentally troubled by an unfortunate situation, just a few minutes earlier: Andreas Pereira opened the scoring for Fulham in the 11th minute, the ball hitting Robertson's thigh before flying into the net.

Arsenal (right) are having difficulty finishing.

A draw is a defeat, but a draw with only 10 men when losing points is a detail that speaks to Liverpool's mental success. Cody Gakpo's equalizer early in the second half saw Mohamed Salah reach the milestone of 100 assists since joining Liverpool in 2017. Since then, only three players in Europe have surpassed Salah in this statistic: Lionel Messi, Thomas Mueller and Kevin De Bruyne.

Rodrigo Muniz scored Fulham's second goal, but Diogo Jota equalized with four minutes left. Jota himself had only come off the bench a few minutes earlier. Liverpool have not lost any of the last four times the opposition have opened the scoring. The ability to equalize (or even win) from behind is still a clear strength of Arne Slot's team. Having repeatedly dropped points (and had matches postponed) in the Premier League, Liverpool are now preparing to compete for a place in the League Cup semi-finals with Southampton.

A BLURRY RSENAL

While Liverpool recovered a point from a disadvantage against Fulham, Arsenal dropped two points after only drawing goalless with Everton. Much has been said about Martin Odegaard's leadership, Bukayo Saka's brilliance or their set-piece prowess, but it turns out that all of that is not enough to make Arsenal truly formidable.

The lack of a striker is Arsenal's biggest weakness during this period. And without a real striker, Arsenal's attacks lacked purpose, lacked ideas, and thus became vague and lackluster. They kept the ball a lot, but Arsenal only had a dozen or so final passes leading to a shot. Not only were there no goals, but this was also a match where neither side had a clear chance to score. Everton didn't even have a shot on target. Their main job was to defend, to neutralize all pressure from Arsenal's attack.

This season, there have been 5 teams that have played without scoring a single goal in the entire Premier League match. The main reason, of course, is that they have to worry about defending against heavy pressure from the opponent. Arsenal were the "opponent" in 2 of the 5 such matches. Before Everton was Nottingham Forest, last month. Yet Nottingham Forest have now entered the top 4, thanks to Man.City's late kick-off. Trailing until the 87th minute, Nottingham Forest surprisingly won 2-1 against Aston Villa, thanks to Nikola Milenkovic and Anthony Elanga. Meanwhile, also in this series of matches, Newcastle crushed Leicester 4-0. After many famous coaches, it was Ruud Van Nistelrooy's turn (who temporarily led MU and officially led Leicester quite successfully in the first 2 matches) to have a clear experience: how difficult is coaching in the Premier League!

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/ung-cu-vien-vo-dich-dong-loat-mat-diem-185241215213619108.htm