Burnley 0 Liverpool 2
The Clarets welcomed Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool to Turf Moor, with both sides looking for a much-needed win for very different reasons. Burnley needed to close the gap to those outside the bottom three, while the visitors were looking to go top of the table.
Liverpool made their intent evident from the off as Salah found Gravenberch, who played a neat flick into the path of Elliott. He drew a first save of the game out of Trafford as the Burnley keeper got down well into the bottom corner of the goal.
Amdouni then spun in the middle of the park to leave two Liverpool players for dead. He ran towards goal and despite having options left and right, only had eyes for goal. Sadly for the hosts his shot went well wide and did not trouble Alisson.
Gakpo and Nunez then exchanged a neat one-two, before the Dutch youngster laid it off into the path of the Uruguayan. He side-footed a first time shot straight past Trafford and into the bottom corner of the goal, from well outside the box. Fantastic strike.
Credit: @LFC
Klopp’s side were dominating the game by this stage and as Nunez found Salah, his instinctive shot was brilliantly tipped over the bar by the Burnley keeper. James Trafford has certainly been the shining light of Burnley’s season so far.
As Kompany’s side failed to clear the ball, with defenders looking like a comedy sketch in their attempts, Gakpo drilled a shot towards the bottom corner. Trafford saved again but the Liverpool player reacted quickest to smash the ball into the back of the net.
His celebrations were denied when the referee blew his whistle for a foul by Nunez in the build-up. Then came the tiresome wait for a VAR review. They agreed with the referee’s decision but the replays showed that the Liverpool striker had done nothing wrong.
This is what frustrates fans with video technology, if they can see the evidence in replays, what on earth are these incompetent people in Stockley Park being paid for? They take long enough to come to a decision but when it is the wrong one, it is not good enough.
No doubt Howard Webb will get his five minutes of fame in the coming days and he will talk about human error and rattle off a host of excuses. In no other occupation would such consistent incompetency be tolerated and your employment continued.
Ironically, the person with the red nose on in the VAR studio was Simon Hooper. If you think that name rings a bell, he was the referee at the centre of controversy when Liverpool suffered their only defeat of the season in the debacle at Tottenham earlier in the season.
Credit: @LFC
Cody Gakpo then played a sublime ball into the path of Mo Salah but his left footed volley thundered off the top of the crossbar and over. Soon after, Endo tried his luck from the edge of the box, only to see Trafford make another smart save to tip it behind for a corner.
The Burnley keeper was to deny Salah again just before the break and the game was very much becoming Liverpool against James Trafford. The fact that Burnley went in at the break only a goal down was purely down to the keeper they signed from Man City in the summer.
The Reds thought they had doubled their lead early in the second half when a neat move was topped off with a first-time finish from Elliott. VAR then reviewed it and decided that Salah was in an offside position, blocking the keeper’s view of the effort.
Of course, they didn’t make that decision, only sending the referee to the monitor. There were many issues with Paul Tierney’s decision, Salah being pushed into an offside position and the replay showing Trafford watch the ball from Elliott’s foot all the way into the back of the net were just two of them.
Despite this, you could question whether this was a clear and obvious error for VAR to get involved in the first place but the referee disallowed the goal and gave Burnley a lifeline in this game they had probably not deserved.
They almost made the visitors pay when Odobert weaved his way through the Liverpool defence to pick out an unmarked Gudmundsson on the back post. Fortunately for Jurgen Klopp’s side, he headed well over the crossbar.
As Liverpool tried desperately to kill the game off, Alexander-Arnold rifled a left-footed shot from outside the box narrowly wide of Trafford’s goal. It was proving to be a nervy end to a game they should have been home and dry in.
Endo then gifted the ball to Bruun Larsen in his own half and the Burnley player tried his luck from some distance with Alisson at full-stretch. It whistled wide of the goal but was so close to earning Vincent Kompany’s side a point they had barely deserved.
Luis Diaz was then denied by the feet of Trafford. The same player was involved in the next chance when he backheeled the ball into the path of Diogo Jota in the box. The Portuguese striker somehow scored from an impossible angle to seal the win to mark his comeback from injury.
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