Championship candidates lose points

R OBERTSON 'S DISASTER 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, but Diogo Jota made it 2-2 with just 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 equalise (or even come from behind) from behind remains a distinct strength of Arne Slot's men. Having dropped points (and had games postponed) in the Premier League, Liverpool are now preparing to compete for a place in the League Cup semi-finals with Southampton.

A BLURRED RSENAL

While Liverpool took a point from a setback against Fulham, Arsenal dropped two points as they drew 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 none of that is 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 have no goals, lack ideas, and thus become vague and lackluster. They keep the ball a lot, but Arsenal only have more than a dozen final passes leading to a shot. Not only are there no goals, this is also a match where neither side has a clear chance to score. Everton don't even have a shot on target. Their main job is to defend, to neutralize all pressure from Arsenal's attack.

This season, there have been 5 teams who have gone on the field without scoring a single goal in the entire Premier League match. The main reason, of course, is that they have to defend 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 are now in the top 4, thanks to Man.City's late kick-off. Trailing until the 87th minute, Nottingham Forest surprisingly beat Aston Villa 2-1, thanks to goals from Nikola Milenkovic and Anthony Elanga. Meanwhile, in the same 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