Trent Alexander-Arnold hailed a ‘huge’ win for Liverpool after the Reds booked a place in the FA Cup fourth round with a 2-0 win at Arsenal.
Jakub Kiwior’s own goal and a late strike from Luis Diaz earned Liverpool victory at the Emirates, with Jurgen Klopp’s side weathering an early Arsenal storm before growing into the game.
The Reds were cut apart in the opening exchanges as Arsenal created, and squandered, a number of good goalscoring opportunities, before a tactical tweak at the break saw Liverpool improve.
The breakthrough arrived when Alexander-Arnold’s free-kick was inadvertently diverted into his own goal by Kiwior, before Diaz sealed the result on the break with a fierce finish into the top corner.
Alexander-Arnold, who captained the side in the absence of Virgil van Dijk, hailed a huge win for Liverpool, who are still competing on four fronts and face an EFL Cup semi-final with Fulham on Wednesday evening.
“It’s huge. We’ve got a lot of players missing today with the lads on internationals and Virg not in the squad. We dug deep with two late goals. We changed things around at half-time and we came out and played football, created our chances. The change of system made an impact for us.
“At times in the first half we were a bit naïve playing out from the back. We stuck with how we play. We have our identity and used the speed of Darwin and Lucho [Luis Diaz]. Darwin went out wide and used his speed against their full-back.”
On his free-kick that created the opening goal, Alexander-Arnold said: “With the in swinger you want to hit it as well as possible. You want to make it as hard as possible for them to clear. We hit the woodwork a couple of times.”
