When all else failed, Rafael Benítez could cling to the belief that sheer desperation would galvanise his Liverpool team. Their backs against the wall, with the enemy's knives at their throats and their manager gesticulating from the touchline, his players sprang to life. It was a response that fuelled their famous win against Milan in Istanbul in the spring of 2005 and it was effective against Manchester United as recently as late October. For Benítez the most worrying aspect of defeat by Arsenal was that the emotional energy ran out at half-time.
For the first 45 minutes every Arsenal player except Denilson wore gloves and played as if they had substituted ballet slippers and tutus for their normal strip. Liverpool tore into them and cut them to pieces. At half time, however, Cesc Fábregas, Andrey Arshavin, Theo Walcott and Armand Traoré shed their mittens and the whole team metaphorically rolled up their sleeves. Within a quarter of an hour they had gone from 1-0 down to 2-1 up and the game – astonishingly, given the setting and the opposition – was won.
Arsène Wenger's interval address had been uncharacteristically irate, and how well it worked. "It's good that after 13 years I can still surprise the players," he said.
Benítez, on the other hand, had sent his players out in the correct frame of mind for the start of the match but seemed powerless to intervene when their spirits drooped in the second half. And he was not alone. Neither Steven Gerrard, vainly attempting to lead by example, nor the voices of getting on for 40,000 Liverpool supporters thronging Anfield could stiffen the spine of a team that had lost its shape and thrust.
Every attack in the final half-hour was repelled by the massed bodies of the visitors, who showed the sort of defiance with which Aston Villa had held Manchester United at bay 24 hours earlier and gradually reduced the Kop to a sullen silence, the sound of singing replaced by the shuffling of feet heading for the exits.
"I believe that at the moment Liverpool don't have the confidence they had last year," Wenger said. "It's difficult to play for 90 minutes at the pace they showed in the first half. When they didn't get a second goal, a little bit of fear crept in. We were not really under threat in the second half."
Fear is not a word normally associated with Liverpool. Even at the worst of times the warrior spirit of the past has tended to provoke a response in the present-day players. That was the quality Wenger noted in their first-half display, when raking passes were hit to wide runners and Fernando Torres lurked hopefully in the central areas. The celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Bill Shankly's arrival at Anfield, due to take place on Wednesday night, when Wigan Athletic are the visitors, seemed to have arrived early.
Facing an invigorated Arsenal in the second half, however, Benítez's Liverpool bore the same relationship to Shankly's teams as Frankie Goes to Hollywood's version of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, played by the stadium disc jockey before the kick-off, had to the original. They were, in short, a colourless travesty of what their supporters have come to expect from players wearing the red shirts – not for lack of effort but through a draining away of collective composure.
Six defeats in 16 Premier League matches is the stuff of mid-table mediocrity, even in a season of unusually open competition at the top. If Arsenal's title hopes were dimmed by Chelsea a fortnight ago, Liverpool's were utterly extinguished, first by the misfortune of Glen Johnson's own-goal and then by the virtuosity of Arshavin's fierce shot.
Alberto Aquilani, bought for £17m from Roma in the summer to replace the finesse lost with the departure of Xabi Alonso, was given only 25 minutes in which to affect the outcome of a game whose rhythms and trajectory had already been established. Evidently Benítez does not feel the Italian has yet reached the required level of match fitness, but it is hard to see how the player's style will fit comfortably into the team's high-intensity approach.
On the rare occasions when his physical condition allowed him a decent run of games Aquilani showed in Serie A that he is a midfield artist in the mould of Giancarlo Antognoni, the elegant, unhurried Fiorentina playmaker who inherited the mantle of Gianni Rivera in Italy's 1982 World Cup-winning team. Such players are rarities in the modern game and Aquilani's fitness record may be a significant indication of how difficult it is for them to survive.
If he can adapt himself to Alonso's deep-lying, long-passing role, all will be well. But that is not his natural game and it may be that his natural gifts would have been better suited to any of the other members of what we may soon have to stop calling the Premier League's Big Four. The size of the fee alone means the pressure is on Benítez to ensure that the 25-year-old Italian's gifts are successfully integrated before the season is much older.
Even more important is the question of whether Benítez, such an agitated figure on the touchline and apparently so remote on the training ground, can calm his players and banish the fear that his opposite number detected in this disturbing performance.
