IT IS very hard to imagine either of these two teams challenging the current top two. It was at Anfield on December 13th, with Arsenal trailing by the only goal at the end of the first half, that their manager gave his players an uncharacteristic roasting and received the desired response. Several of them shed the gloves they had been wearing, got stuck into Liverpool, and won the match. Coming a fortnight after a traumatic home defeat at the hands of Chelsea, it looked temptingly like a turning point in the north London club’s season.

Last night they met Liverpool again, this time in the aftermath of defeats by Manchester United and Chelsea that severely damaged their hopes of winning the title for the first time since 2003-04. In his programme notes, Arsene Wenger refused to admit any similarity between the two matches. Against United, he said, “we didn’t turn up”. Their defects, he explained, were “down to nerves on the day”. At Stamford Bridge they had “played like the home team”, but suffered the misfortune of finding themselves two goals down after 20 minutes. “We were punished for our impatience,” he wrote.

And so they find themselves essentially competing with Liverpool for third place and this private tussle would probably represent an acceptable outcome to an unpredictable and anxiety-ridden campaign. “Liverpool look to have got their defensive stability back,” Wenger wrote. “They try to defend first of all and that suits them.”

Rafael Benitez’s players started as though they had taken note of Chelsea’s success on Sunday in sitting back, allowing Arsenal to advance in numbers, and then hitting them on the counter.

In Steven Gerrard and Emiliano Insua the visitors had the players to launch such quick breaks, with David Ngog and Dirk Kuyt ahead of them to take advantage – plus Maxi Rodriguez, making his second Premier League start for the club. In a desultory opening period, however, they made no real chances.

Once again Arsenal’s midfielders were being given plenty of space in which to weave their patterns, without making it count. Nicklas Bendtner added welcome weight and strength to the centre of the attack, but looked some way short of match sharpness. The supporters are having to wait a long time for Andrey Arshavin to produce another match-turning performance of the sort that secured the victory at Anfield, and the Russian may take a while to recover from his unhappy experience as a stand-in centre-forward.

For a moment, as Arshavin scuttled in from the left and drilled a fierce shot into the side netting two minutes after the resumption, it looked as though Wenger might have repeated his interval oration from the away match. Perhaps Benitez had done the same, since chances suddenly started to appear at both ends.

At last the evening had acquired an intensity as both sides tried to simulate the conviction of title challengers. The foul count mounted, Bendtner was booked for diving, and Alex Song showed that he was every bit as good as Javier Mascherano at executing the little trips and nudges in safe areas to which Wenger ascribed Chelsea’s superiority at the weekend.

The arrival of Theo Walcott in place of Arshavin was a surprise, given his ineffectiveness at Stamford Bridge. Within four minutes of his arrival, however, Arsenal’s other forwards had combined to create the opening goal for Abou Diaby, another largely peripheral figure until he steamed through the middle to head home Tomas Rosicky’s cross.

This was exactly what Arsenal’s fans – and, presumably, Wenger – want to see: quick thinking and geometrical neatness ending with a punch that carried some weight. Liverpool’s defending, however, had spent most of the night failing to live up to the Arsenal manager’s advance billing, and the goal was long overdue.