If last season's visit to Anfield taught Arsenal anything, it was the need for a killer in the final third to break the game open. Fail to do so and they are vulnerable to the sort of magic that bamboozled them in August of last year, even if the man who scored that brilliant free-kick winner, Dominik Szoboszlai, is a doubt for Liverpool on Sunday. And if this game is indeed one that will be decided by what Mikel Arteta terms the "moments players," then it could scarcely have come at a worse time for the Arsenal manager.
Bukayo Saka -- the Gunners' top shot taker, goal scorer and expected goals compiler -- has more than a month left on the sidelines with the thigh injury he suffered in Munich. Noni Madueke could miss the trip with an ankle injury. Christos Tzolis has returned to training but has not played for his new club in more than a month.
Max Dowman, the precocious youngster whom Arteta has already entrusted with turning the tide on Merseyside, will serve the first of a three-game ban for his controversial red card. It speaks to the depth at Arteta's disposal that, even if none of the aforementioned quartet play, there will still be game changers in the side. Even so, this does feel like an occasion where a first-choice center forward in top form would be handy.
Twelve games in and this has been perhaps the weirdest season of all since this esoteric forward landed on English soil in 2020. At his best, he has blown his former club Chelsea away. His worst, meanwhile, includes a wasteful performance in the EFL Cup defeat at Fleetwood and a baffling new tendency to slip offside.
The obvious answer when a player slides from peak to trough in a matter of weeks is to consult his injury record. Havertz did return from the last international break early after straining a muscle and went straight back into the side, playing an hour against Leeds and featuring in every other game since. In those six games he has no goals and one assist.
In most of the minutes he has played, he has struggled to link the Arsenal attack together the way he usually does, let alone to threaten the opposition goal. That is not, however, a hangover from his injury travails. "There's nothing to do with that," said Arteta.
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