Arsenal need to do a lot more to be credible

If, as their manager insists, this is an Arsenal side equipped to challenge this season, then for the second successive home fixture, they were doing a very good impression of a team a long way short. Thin at the back, over-elaborate in front of goal, unable or unwilling to undertake important defensive functions in midfield, this was a vivid demonstration of what has driven their supporters to distraction during the past five seasons. Same old Arsenal, always frustrating.

Yet, Arsene Wenger tells us he has the squad to make a proper tilt at the title. Before kick-off here he let it be known that as far as attacking resources go, he will be doing no business in what remains of the transfer window.

There certainly will not be any bid for Karim Benzema this week. The Frenchman tweeted yesterday that “Real Madrid is my home”.

However, if Wenger believes that he can at last stop the pretence that he possesses a side full of character and instead actually field one, there can be few gathered in the Emirates last night who will agree. Never mind attacking additions, what Arsenal urgently need is someone to shore things up at the other end. Rarely in recent times can a Wenger side have given such a wretched demonstration of their manager’s lack of facility when it comes to defensive planning as they did here in the scoreless draw with Liverpool.

How this game made it to 90 minutes without a goal was the new Arsenal Stadium Mystery. The score could have been three all within the opening quarter hour. Not through attacking prowess, or the application of twinkle-toed trickery, but through scrambling misdirected passes, attempts to trap the ball bouncing off the shin and failure to track runners. That it remained scoreless was largely thanks to the woodwork, a myopic linesman and a quite astonishing save by Petr Cech.

Cech’s introduction to the defence-free environs of his new club was given a further challenge in this game by being obliged to play behind an entirely untested second-string centre-back pairing. Well, not entirely untested: The replacements for Laurent Koscielny and Per Mertesacker, Calum Chambers and Gabriel, have played together before and indeed kept a clean sheet against Wolfsburg in the Emirates Cup.

Here, though, against a strong, muscular, direct Liverpool, they showed all the resolve of a sand castle as the tide comes in.

There has long been a sense at the Emirates that fear and panic lurk in the stadium infrastructure, ready to bubble to the surface at any mishap. Though it was not paranoia that gripped those gathered in the place last night, it was a genuine sense of jeopardy inherent in having the colander where a defence should be. The wonder round the ground must have been how Joe Gomez — big, strong, a genuine defender — was not picked up from Charlton and allowed to join Liverpool unchallenged. What an addition to this Arsenal squad he would have been, a proper stand-by.

The fear dripping down the stands was not that the home side wouldn’t create and conjure, but that they don’t have the steel behind the silk to respond to the robust tactics from their opponents. Every time he bullied forwards, Christian Benteke’s rumbling presence unleashed ripples of panic among those watching. Which was no great surprise given that every time he did, there appeared to be only one man trying to get in his way: Francis Coquelin, the one member of the Arsenal front six with a hint of defensive responsibility.

Wenger responded to the defensive frailty in characteristic fashion: By going on the attack. He sent on Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to run at Liverpool, to put them in reverse, to try to keep the ball in the other team’s half where it might not cause a problem. It is an endearing tactical plan. But you suspect it may not be sufficient when Manchester City and Chelsea are playing as they are.