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.
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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.”
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