Third-rate stinker is no way to honour Bill Shankly

That'll mean the world to him. Just the boost a chap needs 28 years after being lowered into his grave.

My own, less surreal tribute comes after a trawl through that great man's quotes. "Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass," said Mr Shankly. "It is terribly simple."

Well, yeah, you felt as this Anfield sedative dribbled towards the mercy of the final whistle, it is when it's done right. Done like this, on the other hand, it is simply terrible.

By any standards this was a pile of steaming dung. Passes that were given were not by and large taken, the ball was rarely controlled, and those who made themselves available for passes all too seldom received them. Shanks must have been spinning in that grave with enough speed to corkscrew into the earth's core long before half time. So if you hear of an earthquake in New South Wales at about 4.35pm yesterday, our time, you'll know which honorary Scouser to blame.

It says something about declining standards in the self-alleged Best League In The World that Arsene Wenger can, after this flukey win, pretend to himself and the rest of us that his team are potential champions without risking a sectioning under the Mental Health Act.

Humiliating though it feels to dwell on the detail, we'd better go through the motions and observe that, with Javier Mascherano bossing midfield, Liverpool dominated an abysmal first half. It might have been better had Howard Webb, supposedly our top referee, given an early penalty after Steven Gerrard fell when picked out by the returning Fernando Torres.

If Mr Webb would argue that it was a perfectly executed challenge by William Gallas, I'd have to agree. In Judo, it would have ended the bout then and there. In football, it couldn't have been a more blatant spot kick had Gallas clubbed Stevie G with a baseball bat, then unloaded a round of AK47 fire into his head.

Had this been a proper Big Four clash between two sides with more than risible title ambitions, the Liverpool players might have gone suitably bezerk at this injustice. In the muted atmosphere that enshrouds fixtures with potential bearing on who might finish third, they shrugged and got on with it.

After 40 minutes, Manuel Almunia wisely decided that the tonic of a Liverpool goal was what the doctor ordered. To this end, the Arsenal goalkeeper patted a cross towards Dirk Kuyt, and even that fourth-rate Dutch cap-holder couldn't miss.

Any optimism that this would prove to be the catalyst for an explosive second half was ridiculed by another 45 minutes of tedium of a kind you wouldn't ordinarily encounter without having first downloaded an Alistair Darling speech from itunes.

Quite how Arsenal contrived to win is beyond me, albeit they improved minimally as an attacking force (not difficult) just as Liverpool momentarily collapsed at the back.

The equaliser was a slow motion car crash for the Liverpool defence, with Glenn Johnson sending the ball into his own net at the pace of the arthritic snail denied a regular role in Last of the Summer Wine on grounds of age and infirmity.

As for the Arsenal winner, this at least allowed Andrey Arshavin to provide the game's solitary moment of quality, his backlift-free strike, after another Johnson howler, being as cleanly struck as an Adam Gilchrist lofted drive for six over deep mid-off.

After that, Liverpool huffed and puffed without a shred of wit and composure, while Arsenal, for whom Alex Song stood out, showed signs of finally learning how to stifle opponents and run down the clock to protect a narrow lead. But they beat nothing, and were nothing themselves, in what felt less like a football match than an unspoken application for a one-way trip to one of those Swiss euthanasia clinics.

Actually, that flatters it. If Shanks was right about football being more important than life and death, this monster of a match should have been stopped, searched, arrested, DNA profiled, given a damn good kicking in the cells by public spirited officers, and flown to The Hague to answer the charge of being a crime against humanity.