Arsenal vs Liverpool - Emirates Stadium, London - Sunday 12th November 2006

This was the first reasonably big game at the new stadium, against a Liverpool side who were struggling with a poor away record so far this season. They were without an away win, but had admittedly played Man Utd, Chelsea, Bolton and Everton, so some pretty tricky games - nevertheless, they had lost all of them. Coupled with Arsenal's difficulties in winning at the new stadium, and this was a potential disaster waiting to happen. I was eager to see how the crowd would perform, and also how the players would react to their first big game in the new home.

As it was, this was probably the worst performance by a Liverpool team that I remember seeing. Things were reasonably even until Arsenal opened the scoring in the first half, but after that, Liverpool (and Steven Gerrard in particular) just seemed to disappear. All three Arsenal goals were bad goals for any defence to concede, especially one which has hopes of winning the League.

The crowd seemed much better for this game than any of the previous games - although this was really a "warmup" big game, before the real big game against Spurs in 3 weeks. More people standing, more singing, and generally a crowd more up for it. Although, you can still only very rarely hear the sound made at one end of the ground from the other end - sound just seems to evaporate in the stadium.

This result leaves us 10 points behind Manchester United, admittedly with a game in hand - so whilst a morale boosting win, we are still some way off being genuine title contenders, at least at the moment. Still, wins against Liverpool and Man United prove that we could be at least.