Anders Limpar and Ian Wright scored second half goals as battling Arsenal chalked up their first win of the season and stunned Liverpool with a powerhouse performance at Anfield.
Manager George Graham demanded more physical aggression from his deposed premier League title favourites after dismal defeats in their opening two games.
He received it in full measure as the gritty Gunners shot down their championship rivals with an unflinching display of muscle, method and skill.
Arsenal's renewed vigour earned them four bookings, with Lee Dixon, John Jensen, Ray Parlour and Tony Adams all shown the yellow card for fouls. The Londoners also had goal hero Limpar led away in the 62nd minute with a nasty looking eye injury.
Their thundering committment was altogether too much for Liverpool and in the end Graham's team should have won far more comfortably than by the two goals that the impressive parlour set up for Limpar and Wright in the 53rd and 80th minutes.
Limpar struck at the far post when Parlour, who gave away a penalty on his league debut at Anfield last February, sent a cross from the right beyond the dive of goalkeeper David James for the Swede to strike home.
By the time that Wright, making his first full appearance of the season, added the second goal ten minutes from time to clinch the points, it had needed a combination of James' superb saves and Arsenal's wasteful finishing to keep the scoreline in check.
The clincher finally came when Parlour, still only 19, unhinged Liverpool's off-side trap to send Wright, last season's top league goalscorer, sprinting clear to force his shot over the 1 million pound former Watford goalkeeper.
By then, James had made splendid saves from Parlour, Wright, David Hillier and substitute Paul Merson, while opposite number David Seamen enjoyed a quiet afternoon against an impotent Liverpool attack badly missing the injured Ian Rush and Paul Stewart.
Arsenal skipper Adams and reserve centre-half Colin Pates erected a virtually impenetrable barrier in the centre of the Gunners' defence, but it was the Londoners' combative midfield energy which finally won the day after an undistinguished first half.
England's Dixon and Denmark's Jensen had already been booked by the time the slimline Parlour clashed with Liverpool's Rob Jones to produce yet another yellow card, and also the macabre sight of a kitbag thrown onto the pitch in anger from the Liverpool dug-out.
Arsenal lost Limpar 28 minutes from the end but his substitute, Merson, provided just as many problems for Liverpool as he battled to prove his fitness to manager Graham, who left him out of the side for being overweight.
James brought off yet another impressive save to stop Merson at the far post from a cross by Hillier, who was then also denied by the goalkeeper.
Kevin Campbell wasted a wonderful opportunity two minutes from time to make Arsenal's win even more emphatic when after slipping through the middle of Liverpool's defence he shot wide with the goal gaping.
Graham saluted his side's convincing victory and said: "We are back among the big boys now. I love it when we get stick. The boys respond to it and it does my job for me. We showed today we should never be written off. In the end I thought Liverpool's goalkeeper David James was the man of the match. The Premier League is all topsy-turvy at the moment and none of the fancied teams are charging away with it. We are back among the big boys but we have got to maintain it or we will be criticised again."
Ian Wright shrugged off Liverpool's suggestions that he was offside. He said: "Ray Parlour held the ball up beautifully for me and I knew I was onside. It's a long season and we have started with two bad results but now we have something really good to build on."
Mark Wright refused to condemn Arsenal, saying: "You expect plenty of tackles to be flying about but it was no worse than our game against Sheffield United in midweek. The disappointing thing is that we just did not play our football and get anything on target. We've got to get back to that as soon as possible. We've never expected anything other than a tough test against Arsenal because no matter what the critics might say they are still a very strong force and will be up there again at the end of the season."
Copyright - "British Soccer Week"