Alvaro Arbeloa made Liverpool history while summing up Rafa Benitez’s best line | OneFootball

“I think this one is going to be important for us to believe in our idea,” said Alvaro Arbeloa after collecting his first Premier League point since October 2016.

It was certainly more imperative to the Spaniard’s career prospects than the 1-1 draw he helped guide West Ham to at home to Middlesbrough almost a decade ago.

That was proof he could slot in for Sam Byram after seven minutes, support Gokhan Tore on the overlap and keep Stewart Downing quiet. This was an overdue but timely demonstration of Arbeloa’s ability to learn from mistakes and adapt from the dugout.

And it proved he has that critical commodity for any young, novice manager ostensibly promoted beyond his acumen: squad buy-in.

Arbeloa credited his Fulham players after the Liverpool stalemate for their work off the ball as much as on it, for the balance they finally struck, the control they exerted and the structure they implemented.

“After the Crystal Palace game, my players realised where the problem is and we fixed it,” he noted, and the winners of that absurd 3-2 going on to lose their next match by the exact same scoreline, while the losers understood how unsustainable such a chaotic approach was and sought instead to evolve, only underlined his point.

David Affengruber was a drastic improvement on Joachim Andersen at centre-half. The Charles-Berge midfield pivot brought far greater stability and energy. Alex Iwobi was deployed in a more effective position from the left. Josh King continues to be given the platform to thrive. The Real Madrid kids were not forced into the picture. Even the positive substitutions sent the right message in a game managed exceptionally well by Fulham from the touchline to the pitch.

It was not the first time Arbeloa will have been satisfied by his part in a 0-0 draw at Anfield. And as the first former Liverpool player to ever take points off the Reds as a Premier League manager, the sage words of his old manager came to mind.

As Rafa Benitez’s short blanket problem goes, “if you cover your head, your feet are cold; if you cover your feet, your head is cold”. It captures the delicate balance between focusing on defence or attack perfectly.

Arbeloa is far from the only coach wrestling with the simple complexities of that analogy – Roberto De Zerbi has spent exorbitant sums on a hilariously small, patchy quilt which keeps getting caught on his VO5’d Year 8 disco spikes – but he at least earned some decent sleep at the weekend.