In the away locker room, the door swung open with a dull thud, the air inside heavy, almost waiting for them.
No one needed to look up to know Arteta was already there as his shadow stretched across the tiled floor, arms folded, jaw tight.
The low hum of Anfield outside seed to bleed faintly through the walls, mocking in its persistence.
One by one, the players filtered in.
No banter, no muttered jokes.
Just the scrape of studs against the floor, the hiss of water bottles being pulled open.
A glance here, a glance there, but all of them brief and unwilling to linger.
Arteta didn’t move at first.
He just watched them settle onto the benches, his silence cutting deeper than any shout.
And when he finally spoke, his voice was sharp enough to pierce the quiet.
"Tell ," he said, eyes sweeping across the room, "was that what champions look like?"
No answer ca.
Just the sound of soone exhaling too hard and a towel being dragged across a face.
"Because I’ll tell you what I saw."
He stepped forward, pointing sharply.
"I saw hesitation and uncommitnt in every duel. I saw n watching instead of fighting. I saw heads drop when the first setback ca. I saw Liverpool hungrier, sharper, braver. And don’t tell it’s Anfield because that’s an excuse, and champions don’t live on excuses."
The sting of his words hung in the air.
A couple of players shifted uncomfortably, heads lowering further as Arteta went on, their eyes refusing to et the manager’s.
"You want to win the league? Like this?"
His voice rose now, firm and furious.
"Like this, you won’t win anything. You won’t even win your pride back. Because what you left out there was not enough. Not close. Izan..." — his hand cut toward the teenager, sitting at the far end, still catching his breath, sweat dripping freely — "he ran himself to the ground. He’s younger than you, and I know we use it all too much, but you are supposed to believe so he can play on that belief."
"Instead, he played like the only man who believed we could stand toe to toe with them. The rest of you?" His voice dropped, laced with sothing akin to disgust, but at the sa ti, far from it.
"You let him fight alone."
The silence grew thicker.
Arteta let the weight of it hang before he pressed on, quieter but more dangerous.
"So I’m asking you now. Do you want to take the long route? Do you want to scrape, suffer, and fight through an extra ga because you weren’t ready to take this one? Or..." He paused, leaning forward, eyes burning into theirs.
"Or do you want to finish it here? Win this one tonight, and then go ho. Ho to your wife, your kids. And for those of you without?"
A faint, bitter smile tugged at his lips.
"At least to your girlfriend."
A few of them managed the ghost of a smile, but no one dared break the silence with words.
Arteta let the mont breathe, his eyes moving from face to face, demanding sothing in return, anything.
When nothing ca, he finally straightened, voice hard again.
"So this is how it’s going to go..."
And the room froze, waiting for the storm still to co.
...
On the flip side, the Liverpool players tumbled back into their dressing room buzzing.
Shirts stuck to their backs, sweat dripping, but the mood was bright with laughter, sharp voices and little jokes thrown across the benches.
Trent dropped into his seat with a grin, running a hand through his damp hair.
"I swear I’m tired. Izan, he doesn’t stop. Every ti I thought I had him where I wanted, he pulled sothing out. Nutgs, flicks, man’s playing PlayStation out there."
Mac Allister gave a tired chuckle, shaking his head as he peeled the tape from his wrists.
"Don’t even talk to . I feel like he’s had on a string. One second, he’s dropping deep, next he’s gone. I’m telling you, every ti we play him, I feel more and more inclined to retire because what have we been doing all this ti?"
Across the room, Cody Gakpo leaned forward, eyes fixed on Luis Díaz, who was still catching his breath, a towel over his head.
"And you," Gakpo said with a grin that didn’t hide the edge in his voice.
"If you’d missed that ball I left for you? If you’d let it roll and no one ca in behind? War, bro. Actual war."
The room burst into laughter, Díaz lifting the towel just enough to flash a smile.
"Relax, bro, did I miss it? No. I finished it. And I finished it clean."
"Clean?" Robertson chid in from the corner, smirking.
"You nearly broke your neck when Timber ca flying in. I thought you were going to flip into the Kop."
"Still scored though," Díaz shot back, his grin wide now.
"And you all celebrated with . So don’t start acting like you weren’t happy."
The mood was light, playful, but under the laughter was a thread of nerves.
All of them knew two goals weren’t always enough against Arsenal, especially the Arsenal side put together for the season.
The chatter softened when the door opened, and Arne Slot stepped inside.
The players quieted almost instinctively, their gazes snapping towards him.
Slot’s expression was steady, calm, the kind of calm that carried weight.
He stood for a mont, letting the silence gather before he spoke.
"Good showing," he said simply, his Dutch accent coming out heavily.
His voice carried without needing to rise.
"Two goals. Strong energy. Exactly what we asked for."
He paused, scanning the faces in front of him, and the tone shifted.
"But," he said, softer now, almost a whisper that forced them to lean in, "it is not enough."
No one moved.
Even the buzz of laughter monts before felt like it had happened in another world.
"You know Arsenal," Slot continued.
"We’ve studied them. They are a different beast in the last half-hour of a ga. It does not matter if it’s at the Emirates or here at Anfield. They believe, always. And if they get one goal, before the seventieth minute..."
He shook his head slowly.
"Everything changes. This crowd will tighten. Their belief will grow. And you will feel it."
A hush fell as the players shifted in their seats, the weight of his words pressing harder than any tactical diagram.
"So what do we do?" Slot’s eyes narrowed, his voice hardening.
"We hold. Every second. Every duel. Every pass. We hold until the whistle blows. Because only that, only complete focus to the very last second, will win us this match. And only then," he let the words hang, "do we give ourselves a chance to win the league."
He let the silence sit for a long beat, then gave a single nod.
"That’s all I can say to you. We’ll keep the sa thing we went with for the first half."
And just like that, he turned and left them, the door swinging shut behind him.
No one rushed for their boots.
No one reached for a phone.
Instead, they sat in the quiet, nodding to themselves, so leaning forward, so stretching, each man digesting the ssage.
A group still buzzing, but now steadied, locked in.
And now from the tunnel, Izan was among the last to step through, his head high, the away fans above the corner stairwell roaring his na the mont he ca into sight.
It was a smaller pocket than the wall of Anfield red, but their defiance carried.
Liverpool followed, Van Dijk at the front, his aura-farming ass, leading a side buoyed by two goals but wary of the storm still possible.
Trent gave a glance sideways, catching Izan’s eye for half a heartbeat before looking away; he had been nutgged and flicked at will in that first half, and he wasn’t about to fall in love with the kid, too.
The stadium swelled as the teams walked back onto the pitch.
Anfield’s main stand bellowed a song that seed to shake the ground.
"Two-nil and you fuck*d it up," rang from the Kop, directed straight at Arsenal’s end, and the Gunners fans answered with their own chant for Izan, drowning it out for a brief, defiant mont.
Peter Drury’s voice carried on the broadcast, rich with the theatre of it all.
"Anfield breathes again. The second act of this title duel begins. Liverpool with two goals in their pocket, but no comfort. Arsenal wounded, but not broken, and a seventeen-year-old at the heart of everything they dare to believe."
Beside him, Jim Beglin added with gravity, "The next fifteen minutes could decide it. If Arsenal find one, we’re in for a storm. If Liverpool hold... well, this place will roar like never before."
The referee checked his watch as the players settled into the spots, and then the whistle shrilled.
"It’s all to fight for here at Anfield!"
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