Graphic: Gunners on target

When the dust finally starts to settle around Anfield this morning, after an extraordinary night when the old place was shaken to its foundations, it will be of little consolation to Rafael Benítez that his team have suddenly become English football’s great entertainers. Throwing off your shackles is one thing, but, for the second successive Tuesday, a pulsating 4-4 draw left Liverpool with the inescapable feeling that they had allowed a prize to slip through their fingers.

On another night this would have been Andrey Arshavin’s story. The Russia forward scored all four Arsenal goals with a truly breathtaking display of finishing, no doubt earning the eternal gratitude of Sir Alex Ferguson, but this was a tale that went beyond the personal. It was the story of a Liverpool team giving everything and fighting to the last, going back to the top of the Barclays Premier League thanks to Yossi Benayoun’s late equaliser, but seemingly destined, as with Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United team after a famous 4-3 defeat on this ground in 1996, to fall agonisingly short of Manchester United.

The parallels with that great match were impossible to ignore. Liverpool went one better than Keegan’s Newcastle, recovering to score one final equaliser through Benayoun after Arshavin had plunged a dagger into their hearts for a fourth time with only seconds left in normal time. But, as on that occasion, the match was epitomised by football played at breakneck pace and kamikaze defending of a type that will have left Benítez wondering just how much he and his team have sacrificed with their desire to go for the jugular in the final weeks of the campaign.

Liverpool led for only 11 minutes of the game, briefly claiming the ascendancy when goals from Fernando Torres and Benayoun turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead early in the second half. They were the dominant team, but, to borrow one of Benítez’s favourite phrases, they were never in control of the game. With Javier Mascherano, Álvaro Arbeloa and Fábio Aurélio giving Arshavin a hand for the first three goals and a collective rush of blood to the head allowing Theo Walcott to set up the fourth, Liverpool were their own worst enemies — after the little Russian, of course.

“That’s the most disappointing thing,” Benítez said. “All of their goals came from mistakes, and I don’t remember any other shots that [Jose Manuel] Reina had to save.

“The disappointing thing is that we made so many mistakes. The positive thing is that we kept fighting to the end because that is what we will have to do in this title race.”

As AC Milan will testify, Liverpool will never give up without a fight, but there is something about these big games that leads them to abandon all sense of conservatism. This is supposedly the trait of their rivals from down the M62, but United have been playing conservatively and efficiently, while not always convincingly, just as Liverpool have performed with a cavalier style and all of the good and bad that it suggests. Ferguson, of course, will happily accept a 1-0 win over Portsmouth tonight, which would send United three points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand.

There had been a note of desperation in Ferguson’s voice on Monday when he stated the reasons why Arsenal should be motivated for this game, three days after their deflating FA Cup semi-final defeat at the hands of Chelsea, and initially it seemed that his concerns might be justified. Arsenal’s below-strength team seemed unable to live with their opponents’ high tempo, but Lukasz Fabianski, who had a torrid time at Wembley, was in inspired form, rushing out to save at the feet of Benayoun, diving to his left to keep out a Torres piledriver and then to deny Benayoun again.

Liverpool had their tails up, with Torres a constant threat, but there was the danger that mistakes could prove their undoing and so it proved in the 36th minute, when Cesc Fàbregas tackled a dawdling Mascherano, swapped passes with Samir Nasri and rolled the ball back into the path of Arshavin, who smashed a fierce shot in off the crossbar.

Benítez responded at half-time with a tactical reshuffle, pushing Dirk Kuyt to the right wing and Benayoun into a more central role, and it quickly paid dividends. A misplaced clearance from Bacary Sagna was seized upon by Kuyt and, although the forward’s first cross was blocked by Kieran Gibbs, his second was headed in superbly by Torres. Seven minutes later Liverpool were 2-1 up, with Kuyt crossing from the right and Benayoun’s brave header at least a foot over the line before Fabianski pawed it away.

Anxiety, though, was afflicting both defences. Midway through the second half Arbeloa dithered, allowing Arshavin to steal the ball. There seemed to be little danger, but the Russian, 25 yards from goal, unleashed a shot of prodigious power and accuracy that flew past Reina. Three minutes later, Arshavin was celebrating a hat-trick with a more routine effort after Aurélio dealt poorly with a Nasri cross.

By now things were getting silly. Torres claimed his second goal with an expert finish from the edge of the penalty area to make it 3-3 with 17 minutes remaining. All Liverpool needed now was to stabilise. For a time they did, but they grew overexcited as five minutes of stoppage time loomed, their defence left hopelessly outnumbered as Walcott set up Arshavin for an emphatically taken fourth goal.

There was still time for Benayoun to scramble home another equaliser in the third extra minute, but this was to prove the final twist of the night, leaving Liverpool’s supporters to pray, almost certainly in vain, that this ends up being the point that wins them the title race, rather than the incredible night that leaves the season’s most enduring memories.

Liverpool (4-4-2): J M Reina — Á Arbeloa, J Carragher, D Agger, F Aurélio — Y Benayoun, X Alonso, J Mascherano, A Riera (sub: R Babel, 73min) — D Kuyt (sub: N El Zhar, 86), F Torres. Substitutes not used: D Cavalieri, M Skrtel, A Dossena, Lucas Leiva, D Ngog.

Arsenal (4-2-3-1): L Fabianski — B Sagna, K Touré, M Silvestre, K Gibbs — Denilson (sub: T Walcott, 67), A Song — S Nasri, F Fàbregas, A Arshavin — N Bendtner (sub: A Diaby, 90). Substitutes not used: V Mannone, E Eboué, A Ramsey, Eduardo da Silva, C Vela. Booked: Sagna.

Referee: H Webb.