Liverpool vs Arsenal has built a reputation over the years as one of the most entertaining fixtures in English football.

From George Graham masterminding that 2-0 season-finale win at Anfield to beat the home side to the First Division title in May 1989, to the enthralling 4-4 draw there in April 2009 which saw Andrey Arshavin score all four for Arsene Wenger’s men, to Brendan Rodgers’ side flying out of the blocks with four goals in the first 20 minutes to stun their visitors en route to a 5-1 win in April 2014, this fixture screams goals and a record for the most in one meeting between the two clubs was set 15 years ago this week.

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Nine goals flew in as Arsenal swept Liverpool aside 6-3 at Anfield in a League Cup quarter-final in January 2007.

Julio Baptista took most of the attention, scoring four times and having a penalty saved on the night, but was supported extremely well up front by Jeremie Aliadiere, who opened the scoring and set up three of the other five goals. (Amazingly, that nine-goal record no longer stands after a 5-5 draw in the same competition in October 2019 that saw hosts Liverpool eventually go through on penalties.)

“That game just feels like it’s once in a lifetime,” Aliadiere tells The Athletic before the two sides meeting at Anfield tonight in another League Cup tie, this time the first leg of a semi-final.

“One of those crazy games where everything you do just seems to work, everything goes your way. You don’t feel like you’re giving more than in another game, but for some reason, everything just fell in place.”

The match was meant to be played in Christmas week but was postponed because of fog. Arsenal were ready to travel north before referee Martin Atkinson called off the game, to the disappointment of managers Wenger and Rafa Benitez.

It was rescheduled for January 9 (a Tuesday night), in between another meeting at Anfield in the FA Cup on January 6 (Arsenal won 3-1) and a further Arsenal visit to the north west to play Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park on January 13 (a 2-0 away victory). Wenger’s decision on transport to the game veered away from the norm as a result, which had an impact on those in the squad.

“When we had to play again, we didn’t even travel the night before. We travelled on the day. Because there were so many games around (that time) that Arsene said, ‘Let’s not travel the night before, let’s just go on the day’,” Aliadiere remembers.

“Arsene normally loved to travel the night before for every single game, but because this game had to be rescheduled, he decided to travel in the morning. It felt, in some way, like it was not an important game, like Arsene Wenger didn’t take it very seriously because we didn’t travel the night before, just went up on the day by coach.

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“I don’t know if that helped us as young players, thinking, ‘He doesn’t take it that seriously, he feels it might be a tight game for us we might lose’. So maybe it didn’t put too much pressure on us by doing that.”

Young players being involved in Arsenal’s cup ties became the norm during the Wenger years. Aliadiere was 23 at the time and had Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie to compete with for first-team action.

The young Frenchman started all six League Cup ties that year and appeared in four of the five FA Cup matches Arsenal played, but was in the XI for only four of the 38 league fixtures as Arsenal finished fourth, and saw just 11 minutes of action in eight Champions League games. Precious minutes in the cup competitions were not a given, but there was an understanding of the manager’s preference to rotate which built excitement for players who were not starting regularly for the first team.

“To be honest there wasn’t any conversation from him (Wenger). We as young players knew we might get an opportunity to play those kinds of games, but it was never guaranteed,” Aliadiere explains.

“If I didn’t, I would have been disappointed, because I would have felt like, ‘Oh my god, I’m definitely not in his plans whatsoever’. You prepare for that game and as much as it’s exciting to know you’ve got a good chance of getting involved, it’s a lot of pressure because if I don’t perform, the next cup game, I might not be involved.”

Of those in the starting XI, Kolo Toure was among the most senior and the only outfield survivor from the team who’d won at Anfield in the FA Cup three days earlier. He helped Aliadiere open the scoring 27 minutes in with a floated ball over the top of the defence that the recipient both knew was coming and feels went underappreciated at the time.

January 9, 2007: Liverpool 3-6 Arsenal

When The Beast bossed Anfield 😎@J_Baptista81 💪

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) January 9, 2019

“With Kolo, I knew if he had the ball, he was a player that doesn’t only look (to play a pass) five, six or seven yards. He looked for solutions far away as well. It’s something that, in training, Kolo and I knew that if he had time on the ball, as soon as he had his head up, I was making those kinds of runs because he had the quality to deliver,” he recalls.

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“Back in that time, you just expected your centre-back to defend and pass it to the midfield, letting them be creative. Kolo definitely didn’t get enough credit for his distribution, because that was an unbelievable pass. If that was Cesc Fabregas doing that, everybody would have thought, ‘What a ball!’.”

Robbie Fowler equalising six minutes later kept the game tight, but the wheels would soon come off for the hosts.

Baptista’s first goal, to make it 2-1 on 40 minutes, appeared to put Jerzy Dudek and the Kop into a state of shock.

Not hit with tremendous power, but enough dip to deceive goalkeeper Dudek, Aliadiere admits it was “a weird moment” to witness as he ran in hoping for a rebound. Then, early in six minutes of stoppage time added on following a match-ending injury to Liverpool’s Mark Gonzalez, Fabregas’ corner ricocheted in off Alex Song.

Soon after, Arsenal’s forwards were through again to make it 4-1 before half-time. Baptista, drifting in off the left, threw a couple of stepovers into his dribble as Aliadiere made for the box. Looking back, the striker is surprised he was able to jog past Sami Hyypia with relative ease before laying the ball back across to Baptista to score his second.

“Like you, I’ve watched this game and replayed it so many times in my life. My run was not very sharp or powerful, it was a basic little run and it did feel like the defenders were a bit static, not moving very quickly,” Aliadiere says.

“When I have a look at that game, I just think, ‘God, it looks so easy. Would that happen now? Would you be able to make that little run and have nobody tracking you?’.”

So what went through his mind when making those runs as a striker?

“For me, it’s making the run but not always, ‘Oh, go on, slide me in’, expecting to get the ball,” he says.  “It’s more, if I’m in — because I can’t see who is following me, I’m just making that run — thinking, ‘If he sees, I’m alone, he will pass it. If he sees somebody’s following me, then I’ve created space for somebody else’. That’s how I was seeing it at the time.

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“He came from the left, coming inside, I’m making a run the opposite side, trying to drag a defender out of position. When the ball came to me and I saw I was alone I thought, ‘Oh brilliant, no one followed me’, and it was easy to slide it back to Baptista in the middle to tap it in. It all felt like a training session, when you do those combinations in front of goal with mannequins.”

A similar run from the French forward across Hyypia resulted in a penalty just before the hour, but Baptista had his shot saved by Dudek.

The Brazilian’s third and fourth goals came in the remaining half-hour, however — both from Aliadiere passes after he had chased long passes into the Liverpool half.

Despite four of Arsenal’s goals coming in front of the Kop, Aliadiere prefers the two in the second half that came in front of the away fans — where Baptista celebrated his fourth goal on 83 minutes by shifting the attention to his strike partner, dropping to one knee to figuratively shine his boot.

“On that evening he scored four, he could have scored five if he scored that penalty. As a football man, you can only appreciate I’ve given him at least two goals on a plate where all he had to do was tap it in, so it (the celebration) was just an appreciation which, to be honest, he didn’t have to do but I really appreciated,” he says.

“At that time people remembered who scored the goal, counting the assist was not such a thing as it is now. I know a lot of people remember that game for Baptista scoring four and I appreciated the fact he gave me that little thing, saying, ‘You’ve been as important as me for the assists and the job you’ve done this evening’.”

Despite Baptista only being at Arsenal on a season’s loan from Real Madrid, knowing little English and playing alongside him mostly just in cup games, that connection with Aliadiere came naturally.

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“Our partnership always worked because I was more focused on playing as a No 9, making those runs behind, and he wanted to get more involved in the play. He wanted to be more of a No 10 and that suited me because I needed somebody next to me,” Aliadiere explains.

“Every time we played together, even in training, it always clicked. He wanted the ball to feet, I wanted to make runs. I don’t think it was planned, but because we were different, it clicked.

“He didn’t speak very good English, but he spoke enough. To be honest, when he came to us, he’d already played for Sevilla and Real Madrid, he was a top player. You don’t have time to speak, it’s like understanding the same kind of football we want to play — which was always pass and move, playing one and two-touch. We didn’t really need that communication, it was more of a football understanding.”

Interestingly, in the away changing room afterwards, as expected, the players were somewhat surprised by the result. Wenger, however, did not seem to be acting too out of the ordinary considering his team had just scored six goals at Anfield.

“He didn’t even say much. I don’t think he realised what happened himself. It was just, ‘Well played boys, that was brilliant’. He didn’t really make a big fuss out of it,” remembers Aliadiere, who is now 38 and does commentary and live match coverage for Arsenal’s in-house media. 

“The next day at training, we had a chat and he said, ‘Those movements, that’s what I want you to do. Keep doing that because that was brilliant’ and that’s it.”

Henry, left out of the squad after playing 88 minutes and scoring Arsenal’s decisive late third goal in the FA Cup tie on the Saturday, also commented, adds Aliadiere.

“Thierry said something, obviously,” he adds with a laugh.  “The joke was a bit like, ‘With that game, you’ve got Julio Baptista’s career back on track because you set him up for all those goals and he’s getting all the praise’.”

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Wenger fielded many of the same players to beat arch-rivals Tottenham Hotspur 5-3 over two legs in the semi-finals. Baptista bagged two more goals (three, if you include an own goal that put Spurs 2-0 up) in the first leg, while Aliadiere scored, alongside Adebayor and a Pascal Chimbonda own goal, as Arsenal won the return at the Emirates after extra time.

The manager then kept faith with players who got him to the final for the Millennium Stadium showpiece against Chelsea, with Justin Hoyte and Armand Traore as the full-backs as well as Baptista and Aliadiere keeping their places up top. Two Didier Drogba goals, cancelling out Theo Walcott’s early opener and first as an Arsenal player, took the trophy to Stamford Bridge in a stormy match which saw three red cards but that 2006-07 season stands as one of just three runs to the League Cup final in the Wenger era.

Baptista is not alone in being remembered for scoring four goals against Liverpool in the yellow away shirt of Arsenal, however. Just over two years later, Russian forward Arshavin did the same in a league fixture.

With Aliadiere at Middlesbrough by then and Baptista having moved on to Roma, both were part of the club’s history but were still able to appreciate the parallels.

“I was just thinking, ‘This is obviously meant to be, it’s an Arsenal thing to do at Anfield’,” he says on his reaction to Arshavin’s four goals late in the 2008-09 season.

“The way both teams set up and play, it’s always a game that creates goals. The mentality and way of playing is always very open. If you’re prepared to make runs behind the defenders, you’re always going to get space and joy.

“A hundred per cent (Liverpool 3-6 Arsenal was of my favourite matches). After that game, I know I said people remember Baptista more but I did get a lot of credit, which was great to feel. Sometimes you didn’t get the credit you deserved, but a lot of Arsenal fans, in particular, always mention it to me when we talk.

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“It being a quarter-final at Anfield, playing against Steven Gerrard and Robbie Fowler, I would say it’s one of my best memories and definitely my best game for Arsenal.”

(Top photo: Mike Egerton – PA Images via Getty Images)