From the away section came the rolling chorus of jeers that confirmed what everyone in the ground already understood. Webb was balancing his books.
The handball decision had given Liverpool nothing when it should have given them a penalty against; the Sterling challenge had given Arsenal nothing when it should have given Liverpool a free kick and a red card in favor.
Both teams had been denied something. Both sets of supporters had been handed something to be angry about. And the referee, in attempting to correct one error with another, had produced not balance but a compound injustice, a situation in which neither side trusted the man with the whistle, both sides felt aggrieved, and the final minutes were conducted in an atmosphere of frustration.
The players felt it in every challenge. The final exchanges were more physical and emotional and increasingly tense, both sides were living simultaneously with what they needed from the match and what the match had refused to give them.
Arsenal hunted for the breakthrough goal and couldn't find it. Liverpool defended and looked for the counter and found the spaces closing before they could open.
Julien roamed through the middle but the final chance never quite appeared.
The clock ran down. There was no miracle for either side.
The referee's final whistle split the air.
2–2.
The Emirates Stadium settled into a complicated, unsatisfied silence. No one in the ground was happy with how the afternoon had ended.
Arsenal's players gathered around Webb and continued their protests about the handball.
Julien stood still for a moment in the center of the pitch, looking up at the scoreboard. He let out a quiet breath through his nose. Then he found Sturridge and slapped his palm and his expression gave away very little.
He had not been able to give his team the win.
Klopp's first Premier League match was not going to begin with three points.
The Arsenal fans, still simmering about the referee, had no choice but to accept the result and allow themselves no other feeling about it until they were well away from the stadium.
Liverpool's travelling supporters, by contrast, had already begun the math: a point at the Emirates, from 0–2 down, in a team still three days into a new manager's tenure.
They would take it. They would take it and carry it back up the motorway and talk about it for days.
When the broadcast cut to footage of Wenger walking grimly down the tunnel, Martin Keown's voice carried unmistakable regret.
"I'll be completely direct with you, 2–2 is a deeply unfair result for Arsenal. We had every right to win this game. The slow-motion replay is clear-cut: Sakho's arm is extended well beyond his natural body position, the ball makes clear contact, and by any honest reading of the laws of the game that is a penalty.
A penalty given in the eightieth minute, when Arsenal were pressing, in front of their own fans, this game is almost certainly over. 3–2 to Arsenal, and we're having a completely different conversation. Instead, we're sitting here talking about a draw that doesn't reflect the balance of the ninety minutes."
He paused, and when he continued his frustration had been tempered by the obligation to be accurate.
"I'll acknowledge that Liverpool showed something real tonight. Coming back from two goals down requires genuine character, and they showed it. And Julien's performance lived up to every word of the hype around him, and some of the hype was substantial.
But none of that changes the central fact of the evening: Arsenal were denied a clear, legal penalty by a refereeing error, and that error directly decided the result. For a side with genuine title ambitions, a draw at home to this degree of misfortune is going to leave a mark."
He paused, and when he spoke again his voice had softened into something approaching wistfulness.
"Arsène needs to take this through the proper channels. This level of oversight cannot keep being absorbed in silence. For every Arsenal fan in the ground today, this one is going to sit badly for a while. We should have won. We genuinely should have."
At this point, Parry added softly, "The Sakho incident is what it is, and Keown's frustration is entirely understandable. But football doesn't always give you what you deserve in a single match. These things happen..."
In his post-match press conference, Wenger kept his composure but left little doubt about how he felt.
"This evening is a source of great regret. We had the opportunity to win this match, and we did not take it. In the first half the team executed our plan with discipline, and the 2–0 lead was a fair reflection of what we produced. The second half shifted the dynamic. Liverpool made their adjustments, and the match took a different direction."
When the handball question arrived, his eyes hardened in a way that the rest of his face did not.
"I have seen the replay. Sakho's arm is clearly extended beyond his body; the ball strikes it firmly and directly. Under any interpretation of the laws of the game as they are written, that is a penalty. An unmistakable one.
The referee did not give it. That was the moment we could have made the game safe and the decision went the wrong way. Given the effort my players produced over ninety minutes, that is a difficult injustice to sit with quietly."
He let a beat pass before continuing. "That said, we must be honest about what Liverpool did. They adapted tactically in the second half with real clarity of purpose. And when Julien was given the freedom to operate as a finisher rather than a creator, he was exceptional. His directness and his quality exposed our defensive concentration at two separate moments. We will work on that. It is something we can address."
He rose at the end with his courtesy intact, the smile was thin but present. "Regrets are inevitable in this game. Football continues. We will regroup quickly and try to give our fans something better to look forward to."
At the other podium, Klopp showed no inclination to dwell on the evening's difficulties, and considerable leaning to make sure no one else dwelt on them either.
"Coming back from 0–2 down at the Emirates, against Arsenal at the top of the table, to draw 2–2, that tells you something about this group of players that no tactical analysis can tell you.
That is character. That is Liverpool's character, which some of these players have always had and some of them are discovering tonight for the first time. The details of the game itself don't interest me much right now. What matters is that I saw a team that refused to accept the outcome they'd been handed. You can't teach that. You can only find out whether it's there."
His eyes brightened when Julien's name was put to him.
"Nineteen years old. Two goals in a match like this. That free kick, I'll be honest with you, when it bent like that, I was not completely calm."
The grin that crossed his face was genuine.
"But this is what I've been trying to tell people: Julien is not a luxury for this team. He is not a young talent we are developing carefully while we look for the real solution. He is the foundation. He is what Liverpool's future looks like.
Players with that kind of quality and that kind of courage, they make Anfield louder, they make the dream feel real, they make everything possible. And what I saw tonight, in a ground that has not been friendly to him, when the game was hardest, that is not a player who is going to stop growing."
When pressed on what he believed this Liverpool side could become, Klopp did not hesitate.
"Football demands patience, demands that you grow alongside your team, that you understand each other across training sessions and difficult matches and moments that don't go the way you planned.
Right now, Liverpool has players willing to fight for something bigger than themselves, a young man who can carry the weight of real expectation, and the most remarkable fans in the world. This club is extraordinary. That is not a line, it is why I am here rather than somewhere else."
He sat back, and the grin widened. "If I'm still in this chair in four years, I believe we'll have won something for this city. Not as a prediction, as a target. Something we move a fraction closer to in every training session, in every match that tests us, in every moment where we could have given in and didn't.
That is what football is.
We build it together. We dream it together.
We make the history together."
The Liverpool team bus eased away from the Emirates and into the London night, the city was unreeling past the windows, the orange streetlight, the dark between buildings, the slow-moving traffic of a Sunday evening gradually was giving way to quieter roads as they moved north through the outskirts.
Klopp turned from the front seat to face the squad.
The cabin fell quiet instantly. Every head turned toward him.
He let his eyes move slowly around the group. He took his time with it, not performing the pause but genuinely using it, looking at each face in turn from the veterans and the young ones.
Then his face opened warmly. "Right, lads. Give yourselves a round of applause."
The bus erupted in clapping.
When it subsided, he continued, and his voice was slow and direct.
"We were 0–2 down. In the second half, every journalist in that press box, most of the people watching on television, they thought it was over. They had already moved on to writing the story about a difficult debut."
He paused then continued. "But you didn't think it was over. You didn't adjust your behavior to fit the story they were writing. You stayed in the match, you trusted the shape, you trusted each other, and you came back. That is what Liverpool looks like."
He let the words settle into the quiet of the bus.
"A draw here, from where we were, that's not a disappointment. That is worth more than winning a comfortable game. Because comfortable games don't tell you who you are. This one did. And what it told us is that this group has something real in it. It shows us how far we can go."
All right, enough seriousness. Relax. Think about tomorrow's session. And remember, every game is a step on the staircase; every moment of persistence brings us closer."
He raised his fist. "We are Liverpool!"
"Liverpool!"
The answer filled the bus completely, louder than the engine, louder than the road, the sound was bouncing off the low roof and the windows and coming back at them doubled.
Julien pressed his forehead gently against the cold glass of the window and watched London slide past in the dark, the lights were moving, the shapes of buildings were changing, the city indifferent to what had happened inside the Emirates and carrying on regardless in the way that cities do.
His mind kept returning to Klopp's words from the press conference. Not the praise, the praise was good to hear, but it was not what stayed with him. What stayed was the other part.
'If I'm still in this chair in four years, I believe we'll have won something.'
Four years.
He turned it over quietly.
'It won't take that long.'
This season, this very season was their best chance at the title.
He watched the last of the London lights thin out behind the glass.
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