One of the biggest headaches of Liverpool being in the Europa League is that this will mean an increased number of Sunday afternoon games which are quite difficult to get to watch because that is usually exclusively family time.

Of course, as with most other fans, I normally plan ahead to make sure that I get to watch the games but on this occasion I had to miss the first thirty five minutes which, therefore, would make it unfair for me to do the usual distinction between who had a good or a bad game.

Therefore, on this occasion I will simply resort to my impressions from the two thirds of the game that I did manage to see.

Of course, the defeat was difficult to take especially given how it came about. Arsenal only played some football for ten minutes during which they scored twice and, even so, one of them was a fortuitous own goal.

Then again, Liverpool didn’t exactly create too much in the second half. For all the huff, there was very little going on. Then again, the goals had totally deflated the players and they couldn’t really lift themselves up afterwards.

At least this game provided another opportunity to see what Alberto Aquilani can do and the overall impression is that he played really well. It is plainly evident that he isn’t fully fit as yet and the pace of the game seemed to surprise him a bit but, overall, he has the vision that Liverpool have been lacking from midfield.

The sickening part of the defeat is that, given yesterday’s results, this was the perfect opportunity to get back into the mix for fourth place. Thankfully, there is another side to that argument which goes that with results elsewhere this defeat didn’t do too much damage.

Yesterday, Benitez said that Liverpool’s season starts now with a fully fit squad at his disposal. If that is the case then the start wasn’t as good as it had been hoped but the most important thing now is to win the next game. Do that and hopefully the confidence that has been missing of late will start to return and Liverpool can embark into the sort of winning streak that they need if they are to take anything from this season.