Trent Alexander Arnold and Virgil Van Dijk
Trent Alexander-Arnold admits Liverpool were driven to “retaliate” against Arsenal by their defeat at West Ham United as he predicted a three-way scrap for the Premier League title.
Trent Alexander-Arnold said: “It has been playing on our minds and we had time to address it after we came back from internationals and evaluate where it went wrong and address it. It was important to get that bounce back, retaliate from that and use it as motivation to go again and make sure it doesn’t happen again. We used it to our advantage, to be honest. Everyone was unhappy with it. We needed to do better. It was tough to take but we know as a team what went wrong, we could have done better and we made sure it didn’t happen again on Saturday.”
Klopp had called for greater aggression from his team after the manner of the goals conceded at West Ham, with Liverpool responding with a display Alexander-Arnold contends was their best this campaign in terms of pressing.
Trent Alexander Arnold said: “Two set-pieces are never good and a counter-attack (against West Ham) but our pressing was very good (against Arsenal). We didn’t really win it too much in the first half but we still pressed and in the second half was probably our best pressing that we’ve had this season, it was back to what we do. We put them under immense pressure and won the ball back and we were able to punish them with Diogo’s goal. it was an outstanding second half, especially in the first 20 minutes of that second half.”
Leaders Chelsea’s 3-0 win at Leicester City earlier in the day had temporarily opened the gap on Liverpool to seven points, with the Reds now back up into third at the end of the weekend behind second-placed Manchester City, who eased past Everton 3-0 on Sunday.
Trent Alexander-Arnold added: “It would be silly of me to say that we don’t look at other teams’ results. We did see the game at lunchtime, it’s a good win for Chelsea at a tough place to go and they won comprehensively. It was important for us to focus on ourselves. You have a rough idea of how it is going to look near the end of the season with the teams, it’s kind of looking like a three-horse race but you never know what can happen in football. It’s an important period for us, games come thick and fast and a bad run of form when the games are coming like this can really tilt a season.”
Alexander-Arnold now has nine assists in his last six starts for club and country with only team-mate Mohamed Salah and Manchester United’s Paul Pogba having contributed more than his six Premier League assists this season. And asked if he’d set himself a target for the campaign,
Trent Alexander Arnold said: “I want to break as many records as I can. I want to make history with my performances and my tallies, and go down in history. For me it is about contributing as much as I can for the team and making sure we win. The team trophies are much more important than the personal ones but to use as motivation I do like to set myself targets. The very minimum is always double figures and I’ve hit that already. I just want to be contributing as much as I can. I would probably say this season would be 15 to 20 in the league. And keep ahead of Andy Robertson? Yes, so far!”
