Aaron Ramsdale saves everything for Arsenal to keep title challenge alive

W hen the season-crowning montages are spliced into shape a few weeks from now, and depending on how the story shakes down from here, it may be tempting to suggest Aaron Ramsdale saved Arsenal’s league title challenge at Anfield.

In fairness, he seemed to save pretty much everything else on a wild, thrilling afternoon. This was a 2-2 draw that could end up being anything, points saved, points thrown away, corners turned, but which is perhaps best left to spin on its own axis, a self-contained event, elite sport pulled into stirring, ragged, angry shapes, all those patterns and plans and pre-set briefings played out through a mist of rage and ambient energy.

This wasn’t just an incredible game of football. It was two incredible games of football crammed into a single running time. The first of these Arsenal won comfortably, romping into a 2-0 lead and looking like pedigree specimens, cosseted A-listers, a fully functioning machine. The second one they lost, or rather Liverpool won, and won fearsomely, producing a final 50 minutes of clarity, snap, swift passing and furious midfield press.

Arsenal met both versions of the current Liverpool here, the 7-0 home edition and the enfeebled away model. Arsenal were battered and jostled and marched around the place in a headlock, and really should have lost this game. But whatever happens from here – and really, spectacle aside, it was a wonderful afternoon for Manchester City – this was still Ramsdale’s day.

There were two startling saves in stoppage time at the end, with Arsenal by now taking huge lungfuls of air, brains frazzled, muscles flooded with lactic acid. The first was a leaping, full-stretch, dolphin flip past the post, the kind of save that might turn up in a