Mercurial Nunez rises to Slot's call to rescue Reds

Arne Slot had talked his way into trouble. When an ignominious defeat beckoned for Liverpool, he may have talked them out of it. Confined to the directors’ box for his verbal assault on Michael Oliver after the Merseyside derby, Slot’s touchline ban did not prevent him going to the dressing room at half-time. However angry he was, his words changed the game.

- RICHARD JOLLY

Mohamed Salah described his manager’s mood as “a bit of frustration”. Slot probably showed a nice line in understatement when he said: “I didn’t give them compliments at half-time, I can tell you.” Three changes came immediately, two goals soon after. Victory followed, just as the title surely will. It may render this a footnote.

Yet at half-time, it had the makings of potentially the biggest shock in Premier League history, the side who may end up with the tag of its worst-ever team winning away at the putative champions. For Liverpool, however, there was not the unlikely double of an away victory over Paris Saint-Germain and a home defeat to Southampton in the same week. Instead, they extended their unbeaten run to 25 league games, their lead to 16 points. If Arsenal were encouraged by Will Smallbone’s opener, they ended up deflated. If Salah was quiet before the break, he ended up with a double that took him level with Sergio Aguero in the division’s all-time scoring chart, with 184.

His afternoon, like Liverpool’s, ended better than it began. “We were slow and sloppy in the first half,” said Salah. Slot added: “The energy levels were far, far, far too low. It was maybe the first time this season I saw this tempo.” He had restricted himself to three alterations in his starting 11, with a team that initially looked needlessly strong but, in a soporific start, too weak, but soon needed three more. The triple substitution was, Slot added, “the only thing I could come up with at half-time to create something different for the second half”.