Arsenal's Jorginho shows why he's invaluable in brilliant display against Liverpool

The veteran midfielder was the man of the match and for good reason

LONDON -- If you'll forgive the self-indulgence from the outset, I'm going to begin with one of my glacial, icy, sub-zero takes. You make a few in this job, some of which you stick with even if the evidence is begging you to change your mind (Timo Werner, your time will come). Few that I have put my name to have been quite as shocking as this, however.

It's deadline day 2023. Arsenal know they need to upgrade a midfield overly reliant on the sketchy fitness of Thomas Partey. Bids for Moises Caicedo have been brushed aside by Brighton. Declan Rice is not available midway through a challenging season for West Ham. In the dying hours of the window, Arsenal take what they can get, agreeing a £12 million deal with Chelsea for Jorginho, the veteran midfielder who has been pushed to the Stamford Bridge fringes as ownership tries to inject young blood into the team.

"Arsenal are going to need to move pretty quickly if they're going to dig Jorginho up from the roots he has sprouted at Stamford Bridge," was the take, one not entirely without grounding. There was good reason for skepticism of the back of Jorginho's closing months at Chelsea. He had looked slow. His influence was dwindling. With the benefit of hindsight, however, his form before moving from west London to north would appear to be more of a Chelsea problem than a Jorginho one.

The doubters have one largely been disproved over the 12 months since he joined Arsenal, a year where he has excelled in big games against Newcastle, Aston Villa and Manchester City. On Sunday, in the 3-1 win over Liverpool, he emphatically rubbished them, leading his youthful teammates through the tumult Liverpool inflict on all their opponents. He was Arsenal's port in a storm and it didn't matter a jot that Curtis Jones and Ryan Gravenberch had the beating of him in a foot race.

When you've excelled in as many big games as Jorginho has, you don't need to hit the afterburners. You're already five steps ahead. So it was that when Alisson spotted a chance to launch a Liverpool attack off an Arsenal free kick, the old man in the hosts' midfield had already worked out how to counter the counter. Diogo Jota was hurtling ahead of Rice and towards goal, primed to poach on an undercooked backpass. As if this were a kickaround on a Wednesday afternoon, he nonchalantly flicked a header backwards with just enough pace to tempt his opponent to chase the ball in vain.

Jorginho quells danger with a flick of his head Wyscout/Premier League

That was typical of this man-of-the-match display, one where every move was judged to a tee, every pass had been played before with the stakes even greater than this "win to revive the title push" clash. The statistics tell a pitifully insufficient tale of Jorginho's performance. He might have misplaced seven of his 52 passes but the ones that really mattered were judged with aplomb. Two tackles, two clearances, four interceptions: these are impressive numbers but they do not capture the innumerable times a Liverpool attack went towards Jorginho and then started heading backwards.

All this when he has hardly seen the pitch of late.

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You'll have seen more of him advertising Babbel on your Twitter feed than starting for Arsenal. This was only the third occasion he has started a game since early November as he has managed a foot issue revealed by Mikel Arteta in his post-match press conference. Despite that, he has missed the matchday squad on just one occasion. Minutes here, minutes there and then thrust into the most breakneck of tests, one which he rose to in much the same fashion he did in Champions League and European Championship finals.

"Unbelievable," Arteta said of Jorginho. "I always say that he's an example, a role model. He's been in a lot of pain because he's had an issue he's been carrying for months. He didn't want to stop, he's been playing with that. He's been training, always the first one in and the last one out.

"For all the kids at the club, if you want to look at somebody, just look at him. He's won everything but you ask him not to play or play one minute last week, he's happy to go there. Ask him to play 90 minutes at that rhythm and he's able to do that. I'm really lucky to have players like this."

As Arteta would also note, Jorginho "makes the people around him better." Rice would certainly echo that view. Asked why Arsenal heads didn't fall after handing Liverpool an equalizer out of nothing, Rice's answer was immediate. "Because we've got people like him," said the England international. After all, when Luis Diaz flicked the ball away from David Raya and onto Gabriel's hand, it was Jorginho who was immediately over to the own goal scorer, geeing him up for the battle ahead.

"[Bringing calm], it's what he's best at," Rice added. "He has qualities not a lot of other midfielders have. I looked up to him, of course. Playing in the same position, he does things at such quality. For myself, I'm trying to learn. Over the years, he has been such a top player. The manager trusts him wholeheartedly."

So did Rice. Arsenal's record signing knew he was free to surge into duels, drive up the field when an opening presented itself. For a duo that have so rarely played together, each seemed to have an innate understanding of the positioning of the other, Rice more than willing to drop back and plug gaps when Jorginho went pressing.

And pressing he went, particularly in an assertive opening where Arsenal throttled the league leaders. In the first half, he was the more advanced of the central midfield duo in Arteta's dual 10 system, the fifth man in the off-ball frontline who ensured that Alexis Mac Allister and Curtis Jones had to work to get in the game. That was what Arsenal needed in the first half so Jorginho delivered it.

In the second, bearing the mental scars of an equalizer handed to Liverpool, a steady hand at the tiller was altogether more valuable. That is what they got with a smattering of line-breaking passes into the attacking third into the mix. Again, it is worth bearing in mind that this was the performance of a man making just his third start in 84 days having been carrying a foot issue.

The circumstances could hardly have been much more testing and Jorginho aced them. Evidently anyone who doubted him on his arrival is not to be trusted when it comes to assessing football.