Jurgen Klopp gives his take on the prospect of facing Arsenal twice in a matter of days after Liverpool’s seven-goal victory over Lincoln City last night.
Liverpool and Arsenal will play each other twice next week after Jurgen Klopp’s men brushed aside Lincoln City in the EFL Cup to see them into the fourth round. Takumi Minamino and Curtis Jones impressed with braces while Xherdan Shaqiri, Marko Grujic and DivockOrigi were also on the scoresheet. There were competitive debuts for Kostas Tsimikas and Diogo Jota in what was a comfortable night for the champions.
Victory at Sincil Bank sets up a mouth-watering fourth round tie with Arsenal, as Jurgen Klopp’s side face the Gunners for a fourth time in three months. The Gunners will travel to Anfield next Monday for a Premier League fixture with the EFL Cup clash to be played later that week. The league match was scheduled to kick off at 8:15pm (BST) but that has been changed to 8pm to align with the UK government’s new 10pm curfew for pubs and bars.
The two sides will be well acquainted with each other having already met twice in recent months. Arsenal have had the better of those meetings with a 2-1 league win in July and a penalty shoot-out victory in August’s Community Shield. Those defeats ended Klopp’s impressive record against the Gunners as Liverpool boss, winning six and drawing three of his first nine matches. After losing the last two Klopp will be desperate to get one over on Mikel Arteta for the first time next week.
“Thank God we have two home games,” he joked in the post-match interview.“Sorry, Mikel. You have to come to Liverpool twice. It’s not so bad.
“I saw the Arsenal game against Leicester, they have a proper line-up, they want to win the competition… We want to win the competition so you have to come through all the rounds. The next one is a tough one.”
Goals guaranteed
The two sides also met in the 2019/20 EFL Cup at the last 16 stagelast October and produced a thrilling game at Anfield that Klopp called “a real rollercoaster”. Liverpool named a second-choice side with opportunities for a number of youngsters and played out a 5-5 draw in one of Unai Emery’s final games in charge. The inexperienced Liverpool side won on penalties but were beaten 5-0 by Aston Villa in the next round.
Games between Liverpool and Arsenal are always full of drama and have produced more goals than any other fixture in Premier League history. There have been 162 goals in their 56 previous Premier League meetings, at an average of 2.9 per game. Since Klopp arrived on Merseyside in 2015, games between the two have averaged an astonishing 4.9 goals.
The date for the EFL Cup fixture is yet to be confirmed but all fourth round matches are to be played the week commencing 28 September. If previous meetings are anything to go by we should be in for another fascinating set of matches as both Liverpool and Arsenal look to continue their perfect starts to the season.