There are a good many reasons why Anfield remains a revered footballing venue and few currently operating in English football have felt it quite as acutely across their careers as Mikel Arteta.
As a player, coach and now as a manager, Arteta has been on the wrong end of Anfield’s ability to discombobulate and scramble the senses of those who visit in search of victory.
In February 2014, he was part of an Arsenal side caught firmly in the grip of a Liverpool in full throttle. A blistering, ferocious performance was the probable zenith of Brendan Rodgers’s reign as the Reds won 5-1 against a team who had arrived on Merseyside as league leaders.
“We start[ed] to lose the game, they were all over us,” Arteta would later reflect on that encounter. “You know what I did? I hid and I gave up on the pitch and we lost 5-1, I will never forget for the rest of my career what I did here. I never did.”
Four years later, Arteta watched from the bench as once more a team with lofty ambitions were forced onto bended knee away at Liverpool. The Spaniard was part of the Manchester City coaching staff five years ago that were beaten 3-0 in the first leg of a Champions League quarter-final they would eventually lose 5-1 across the two legs.
And around 18 months ago, Arteta was in charge of an Arsenal team that arrived on Merseyside on the back of a 10-game unbeaten run across all competitions before being promptly dispatched 4-0.
So perhaps he will view Sunday’s breathless, high-octane draw as personal progress. Given the Gunners have not won at Anfield since 2011, such a viewpoint is a credible one, but from Liverpool’s perspective, the famous L4 din is something they simply have to find a way of bringing it to the boil more often going forward.
Arsenal were cruising for 40 minutes on Sunday. Goals from Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus had given the visitors a commanding lead and it looked like a huge hurdle for their title hopes was being comfortably negotiated. Having flattered to deceive for years, they finally looked like the real deal.
That was until an incident involving Granit Xhaka and Trent Alexander-Arnold provided the crowd with something to rail against towards the end of the first half. After that, it was all Liverpool; who displayed the sort of character that has rarely been seen in the face of adversity during this ordinary and at times awful campaign.
There can be fewer places that intimidate the opposition more when it is in full voice than the home of Liverpool. Erik ten Hag and his Manchester United players will attest to that given their historic hammering just last month. Wherever the two giants of English football finish this term, that 7-0 result will be spoken of for decades to come.
“Where’s your famous atmosphere!?” has been the familiar dig from the away end all season and the answer, flatly, is: reserved for the big games. It’s become a sort of chicken-and-egg issue for the Reds and their fans whereby one cannot thrive without the other.
The sight of both Thiago Alcantara and Darwin Nunez attempting to whip up the supporters during the second half of Sunday’s thrilling game is testament to how much the squad feed off it all.
Without it, in fact, there was surely no way back for a team who found themselves two goals down inside half an hour to the side who started the weekend eight points clear of Man City.
So do the players respond to the reactions on the terraces? Or does the ear-splitting noise rise up thanks to something done on the pitch?
For all the tactical tweaks, the systems and the strategies that make the difference at the elite level, Anfield remains a place that has its wheels greased by emotion. It is why Jurgen Klopp so often attempts to deliver succinct messages to those who visit ahead of games generally viewed as more run of the mill and mundane.
It would be unrealistic to expect the kind of guttural, raucous atmosphere for which Liverpool’s home ground is famed for every single week, but is there also something to be said for it being absent too often?
The sight of Fabinho pleading for more support from a disgruntled crowd midway through the 2-1 loss at home to Leeds United in October remains a poignant one. On the flip side, match-goers have not exactly been served up a host of vintage performances in 2022/23 either.
As one of the biggest clubs on the planet, it is only natural that the famous ground occasionally cannot rouse itself from tourist-driven indifference or a Saturday lunchtime hush, but, as evidenced by Sunday’s game, Liverpool’s not-so-secret weapon remains a potent one when it is really needed.
What the real question is how it is harnessed more frequently next season? As Klopp plots a way back towards the upper echelons of the Premier League, it is something for him to ponder.
Referee charity calls for points deductions and rule change after Liverpool vs Arsenal incident
A charity that helps to represent referees has called for stronger punishments for players that confront match officials after the incident that took place in the game between Liverpool and Arsenal this weekend, where assistant referee Constantine Hatzidakis appeared to elbow Andy Robertson.
In recent weeks, Fulham forward Aleksandar Mitrović was handed an eight-game ban for pushing referee Chris Cavanagh when he lost his head during a game against Manchester United, while Bruno Fernandes escaped retrospective action for contact with assistant Adam Nunn at Anfield.
Now, Ref Support UK, an independent charity that represents the interests of officials, is calling for action to protect referees with its CEO Martin Cassidy suggesting that the Robertson incident was part of a worrying trend.
“The official appears to have been out of order,” Cassidy told The Mirror. “And if it was intentional and it was aggressive then he needs to be banned like any other player — not for more, but the same [length of time]. The learnings here are: what was a player doing going over and manhandling a match official yet again?”
Robertson was left furious by the incident, which Cassidy condemned, with the Liverpool left-back caught by the assistant referee in an action described by former Premier League official Dermot Gallagher as something he had ‘never heard or seen before’.
“Address the result of it, but you have to address the cause of it too,” Cassidy continued. “What caused that elbow to hit him in the face? He grabbed a match official. What happened with Mitrović? He grabbed a match official. What happened with Fernandes? He touched a match official. Don’t touch a match official. It’s not rocket science.
“We’ve called for a two-meter rule. We had this coming out of Covid. It would have been very easy to say: ‘If you come within two meters of a match official, uninvited, in an aggressive manner, you get a yellow card or get sent off.’ There are no boundaries at the moment.
“Money punishment doesn’t work at any level of football. It’s the wrong approach. We need to start deducting points. So if someone is found guilty of abusing a referee, that person’s team loses points. The deterrent will be there.”
A PGMOL statement earlier today read: “PGMOL will not be appointing Constantine Hatzidakis to fixtures in any of the competition it serves whilst The FA investigates the incident involving the assistant referee and Liverpool defender Andrew Robertson at Anfield.”
During the game, the match official’s body confirmed that it would investigate the incident after the game had been completed.