Respect the champions! Winners and losers as Arne Slot shows he can turn Liverpool around while Viktor Gyokeres must be benched after another Arsenal no-show

Listen, Arsenal fans are protective of Mikel Arteta and for good enough reason. Sometimes he does get a lot of unwarranted stick given the work he's done. Should he really be a 'loser' after his team moved six points clear at the top?

With context, yes. Sorry, Gooners. As was the case with the visit of Aston Villa a fortnight ago, this was a massive opportunity for Arsenal to lay down a marker. Liverpool have been in complete disarray and their crown is slipping. This was the chance for the Gunners to take it for themselves.

At this present moment, Arsenal remain the best team in England and Europe, but their deficiencies came racing to the surface on Thursday night. They still can't break down elite opposition from open play, their nervous home crowd can turn on them too quickly and it's a tough watch when the set-pieces don't alleviate the pressure to score.

This may well prove merely a bump in the road come the end of the season, though it's still something for Arteta to digest and find answers for. He's been vocal about the need to dip into the January transfer market, and this performance may only reinforce a view that external solutions are necessary.

In the other corner, is it fair to say the Premier League title-winning manager who scrapped his way to a 0-0 draw while still 14 points off the pace is a 'winner'? Yes, and here's why.

It's been a ridiculously tough season for Liverpool, there's no two ways about it. Even amid this run of 10 games without defeat, they've seldom looked impressive or imperious. Arsenal are obviously a better team right now, so a performance for the Reds may have been more important than simply a smash-and-grab win.

Arne Slot has now managed to stop Arsenal scoring in two games this season. They are the only matches in which the Gunners have fired a blank. It's also another clean sheet against top-line opposition, with Real Madrid, Inter and Aston Villa also failing to score against this iteration of Liverpool. The Dutchman may have taken accusations that his team have become 'boring' to heart, but at least they seem competent again.

Speaking post-match, Dominik Szoboszlai reasserted what he had said in the lead-up to this game - that Liverpool are champions for a reason. "We faced an unbelievable team. We showed again why we became champions last season," Szoboszlai said. "This was a step forward after recent weeks and, yeah, we showed again against a team that is top of the table that we can compete. We need to take it with us for the next weeks."

If the rest of his squad share that confidence, then Slot can definitely turn this season around. Probably not with the defence of their title, but certainly in either the FA Cup or Champions League.

It's time to have the conversation. We, at GOAL, teased pre-match that judgement day was coming for Viktor Gyokeres. He wasn't ready for it.

This Liverpool defence is nowhere as fearsome as it was even six or so months ago. Every week, Jamie Carragher can't wait to get into the Sky Sports or CBS studio to tear Ibrahima Konate to shreds. Virgil van Dijk is past his peak. Yet Gyokeres couldn't even provide the minimum of keeping them occupied to bring others into play.

Arsenal made a number of half-chances in the first half which went to waste, with several crosses and cutbacks failing to find a willing No.9 to convert them. Though Gyokeres wasn't jeered or booed when he was eventually hooked on 64 minutes, the loudest cheer of the night came for his replacement, Gabriel Jesus.

Gyokeres failed to even register a shot in either of his games against Liverpool this season, while he recorded a personal low of eight touches in an Arsenal shirt on Thursday. You could forgive Liverpool's lack of box presence because they didn't have an orthodox striker available, so what was the hosts' excuse?

It doesn't matter if it's Jesus, the returning Kai Havertz or the makeshift Mikel Merino - someone else has to lead the line for Arsenal instead.

Not for the first time this term, Liverpool have seen a star had their wings clipped just as they were taking flight. Alexander Isak fractured his leg scoring against Tottenham last month, and now Conor Bradley is facing a lengthy spell on the sidelines after picking up an inconspicuous injury in second-half added time.

The right-back has put in some promising-to-exciting performances of late, which have often been the silver lining on how tepid Liverpool have been in general in those games, and has picked up an injury at a terrible time.

Bradley's participation for Northern Ireland in their World Cup play-off campaign in March is in doubt, while Liverpool are light all over the pitch as is. The last thing any party here needed was him being stretchered off.

There was also the matter of Gabriel Martinelli adding insult to injury, dropping the ball on Bradley and then trying to roll him off the pitch thinking he was merely wasting time. Slot played down the magnitude of this event rather magnanimously, insisting Martinelli couldn't be expected to think straight in a high-pressure situation and the game has now become so determined by the dark arts that this was a natural assumption for the Brazilian to have made.

Manchester City managed to put the frighteners on Arsenal heading into the festive period. After starting the season poorly and extending their strange form of 2024-25 into this campaign, they seemed to be heading towards another year of relative mediocrity, but a run of eight wins from nine games after defeat at Aston Villa in October propelled them back into the title picture.

Then they nearly blew it. Ordinarily, Pep Guardiola's City would go on streaks that seemed to never end. If there was a blip, it usually only lasted one match and two at a maximum. This is not the formidable City of old. If they had those same title-hunting instincts, they wouldn't have drawn for three games on the spin to Sunderland, a manager-less Chelsea and Brighton. Arsenal are now only six points clear, but City are lucky that gap isn't any wider and they have been handed a reprieve by Liverpool.

City are set to give Erling Haaland a helping hand up front thanks to the acquisition of Antoine Semenyo, the third-highest scorer in the Premier League this season after the Norwegian and Brentford's Igor Thiago. They are nowhere near as solid as Arsenal at the back, but maybe they can simply outscore the Gunners to reclaim the title. Maybe. It's a long shot, but it's at least possible.

If this really was a turning point for Liverpool, then it's terrible news for the rest of the Champions League-chasing pack. Over the last month, Chelsea and Manchester United in particular have thrown away needless points in their pursuit of the top four.

The Reds rode their luck a little to keep their unbeaten run alive, but if they're actually going to act like the sum of their parts again, then they should have little to worry about in terms of the teams beneath them in the table, who can barely piece two wins in a row together, let alone the five that some are seeking to cut their hair.

The year opened with crisis coursing through the veins of Chelsea and United. Liam Rosenior is in post for what BlueCo insist is the long term, while who knows what lies ahead at Old Trafford? All Liverpool have to do is maintain a steady level themselves and they should be looking upward to City and Aston Villa again in no time.