Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand has spoken about Arsenal’s collapse in this season’s title race.
The former England international, who won six Premier League titles during his time as a Man Utd player, says he felt the players started to look down after that 2-2 draw away to Liverpool, and needed experienced players to lift them out of their slump at that moment.
Arsenal went 2-0 up at Anfield and looked to be cruising towards an important win, only for Liverpool to come back and earn a draw, while only some superb saves from Aaron Ramsdale stopped it being a victory for Jurgen Klopp’s side.
Ferdinand thinks Arsenal’s young players needed an experienced head at that moment to tell them that was a good point, but it seems the belief was gone, with the former defender citing the body language of Oleksandr Zinchenko in particular after that game.
“I think the biggest problem was that you (Arsenal) didn’t have anyone in that dressing room who could smell what you were coming into,” Ferdinand said on Vibe with Five.
He added: “I watched you after the West Ham game, after the Liverpool game, and the reaction of the players was players that looked broken. Even the manager at times … just seeing those pictures in isolation I’m thinking ‘wow, these guys are out of something, or they’re going down’. That’s the vibe I got from the body language.
“My first time I won a league title, one of the six … we went and drew at Southampton away, and Arsenal won that weekend, and I was sitting in the changing room thinking ‘we’ve thrown it away, man’. I was down, shoulders slumped.
“I went in the shower and I heard Roy Keane and Gary Neville saying ‘That’s a great point, what a great point that is, hard place to come, we’ll go again next week’. And my whole vibe changed, my body language, everything changed.”
“Was there anyone in that Arsenal changing room doing the same? After those games … was there anyone saying ‘woah, 2-2 at Anfield’s a big result for us, these guys aren’t idiots, they’ve won big trophies.'”
Arsenal went on to have a similar result in their next game, drawing 2-2 with West Ham when they’d been 2-0 up, while another draw with Southampton and a defeat at Manchester City really sealed their fate.