Liverpool’s first away league victory of the season arrived at Highbury on 3 November 1973, and required patience. Arsenal kept the match goalless until the seventy-seventh minute before Emlyn Hughes broke through. John Toshack added a second eight minutes later to secure a 2–0 win.
The result addressed a conspicuous weakness in the champions’ title defence. Their opening seven league trips had produced three draws and four defeats, with just three goals scored. Liverpool could keep winning at Anfield, but their away returns had allowed Leeds United to establish a considerable lead.
Hughes supplied the breakthrough with a forceful shot. Toshack then headed in Alec Lindsay’s free-kick, turning a narrow advantage into a two-goal cushion with five minutes of normal time remaining. Liverpool had scored twice in the closing stages after spending most of the afternoon searching for the first.
There was an unfamiliar element to the selection behind them. Phil Thompson and John McLaughlin both started, while Tommy Smith was absent. Peter Cormack was Liverpool’s substitute and eventually replaced Thompson in the eighty-seventh minute, after the goals had settled the score.
Arsenal’s side included Bob Wilson in goal and Ray Kennedy in attack. Under Bertie Mee, they too were experiencing an uncertain autumn: the defeat left them sixteenth, with Liverpool sixth. The attendance was 39,837.
For Shankly’s team, the two points brought their total to seventeen from fourteen matches. Leeds had twenty-five from the same number, unbeaten with eleven victories and three draws. One successful afternoon in London could not erase that gap, but it stopped Liverpool’s winless away sequence from stretching further into November.
There was little time to dwell on it. Red Star Belgrade were due at Anfield three days later, holding a 2–1 advantage in the European Cup. Liverpool approached that separate challenge with a domestic problem finally corrected: Hughes had opened the way at Highbury, and Toshack had made the first away league win secure.