Liverpool have emerged at the top of the Premier League table, if only temporarily, after beating Burnley at Turf Moor on Tuesday evening. Darwin Nunez broke the deadlock after less than six minutes with a fine strike, and a deft finish from Diogo Jota in in the final minute set the final score, marking the 50th goal of the Portuguese forward for the club in all competitions.
The game
Liverpool certainly deserved their victory, though the outcome could’ve gone either way. Jurgen Klopp’s team stamped their authority over the proceedings from the start and throughout the first half, continuously attacking, without Burnley showing any capability of hitting back. In fact, the home side didn’t even shoot on goal before the break, while goalkeeper James Trafford faced a total of 14 attempts from the visitors. Only luck and Trafford’s obviously vast talent kept Vincent Kompany’s men from getting hammered.
But still only a goal down after the restart, Burnley awoke in the second half and hit back fiercely, pushing Liverpool back into their box at times and creating a couple of notable chances, but it was then Liverpool’s turn to get lucky, as Jordan Beyer and substitute Johann Berg Gudmundsson wasted a fantastic chance to equalize apiece.
Klopp tried to have his team reclaim control in the 67th minute by sending Curtis Jones and Dominik Szoboszlai into the frey, but it would be the introduction of Luis Diaz and Jota to settle the contest. The 90 minutes were about to expire when the substitute attackers combined on the left, and eventually Jota squeezed a low shot from a tight angle past Trafford to remove all doubt as to the winner of the game.
In the end, Burnley had a total of nine shots taken from their 31% of possession, not hitting the target at all, while Liverpool took 19, 10 on target.
Disallowed goals
Liverpool had two disallowed goals during the match.
In the 28th minute, Cody Gakpo pounced on a ricochet inside Burnley’s box to slam into the back of the net, but referee Paul Tierney deemed Nunez to have committed a foul in the buildup and ruled the goal out.
There was certainly contact between the Liverpool striker and Burnley left-back Charlie Taylor before the ball reached Gakpo, though whether it was enough for a foul to be awarded remains up for debate. Be that as it may, Tierney made his decision and the VAR stayed silent.
In the 55th minute, Gravenberch sent a low ball into the box from the right and Harvey Elliott beat Trafford from close range. This time, having allowed the goal at first, Tierney did receive a call from the VAR room, and the footage revealed Mohamed Salah standing in an offside position while blocking Trafford’s view of the shot.
But what made this call controversial was the fact that Salah was pushed into the offside position by Beyer with both hands, a fact Tierney obviously didn’t take into consideration while looking at the VAR screen.
Liverpool have a history of questionable decisions with Paul Tierney, and Klopp’s enmity towards the 43-year-old referee from the Greater Manchester Area is not exactly a secret.
“I have no problem with any other referee, only you,” Klopp once told Tierney, after Andy Robertson got a straight red card against Tottenham Hotspur and Harry Kane escaped with only a yellow for an arguably worse offence.
Tierney was in the VAR room when Alexis Mac Allister was sent off against Bournemouth earlier this season, a decision that Liverpool appealed successfully later. Back in 2020/21, when Liverpool hosted Manchester United at Anfield, he blew the halftime whistle six seconds before the one minute of added time was up, just when Sadio Mane seemed to be heading towards a one-on-one situation with United goalkeeper David De Gea.
Last season, in Liverpool’s game against Manchester City, Tierney gave a foul by Salah on Bernardo Silva even though the City midfielder pulled the Egyptian’s shirt rather fiercely and took him down. Klopp was booked for dissent, and his words about Tierney in the post-match presser got him into serious trouble.
On top it all, Liverpool were on the wrong end of several horrendous decision this season, including Diaz’s infamously disallowed goal against Spurs, and a penalty not given for Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard clearly handling the ball inside his own box, which happened only three days before this match.
“Only someone who has never played football will make this an offside goal,” Klopp later said of the second situation.
“But, they will tell us in the end that it is an offside situation – it is too often – he looked at it for five minutes. It is insane.
“That is a ridiculous decision.”
The reactions
Speaking after the game, Burnley boss Kompany praised Liverpool’s quality, as well as his own team’s obvious ability to threaten the six-time European champions in the second half.
“We played against a top side, I don’t think the scenario of the game was too bad in terms of being in the game, and then having a late push to get a result. We had our moments, we can’t prevent them from having a moment because they are a top side, but we had our moments as well.
“The team fights, the team is alive, the team is entertaining, it just lacks that little bit of final touch at the moment to reward ourselves. I keep saying I see them working every single day and I have no doubt they will make that step.”
Kompany added: “It was a game where if you look at how dominant Liverpool were in the first half it’ll tell you one side of the half but I felt we had big, big transition opportunities.
“I felt that there in the first half. But we weren’t as solid as we needed to be to benefit from that. The second half we were a little bit more solid and had more moments because of it and looked more dangerous.”
As for the game itself, Klopp called it as he saw it.
” I really liked the game we played, but we should have scored more and that’s clear. Then the game stays open and Burnley have massive chances to score [at] the second post – maybe even the first they had, if I am right: the finish when he mishits the ball.
“I am pretty sure that was the first chance [for them], but in the end we deserved to win the game and it was two perfect goalscorers, I would say, with Darwin and then Diogo.”
The aftermath
Following their victory at Turf Moor, Liverpool are at the top of the table with 42 points, two more than Arsenal who could overtake them again if they beat West Ham at the Emirates on Thursday, three more than Aston Villa who suffered a shocking defeat away to Manchester United, six more than Tottenham Hotspur who are yet to face Brighton at the Amex, and eight more than Manchester City who play away to Everton on Wednesday and will still have a game in hand after that one.
The defeat has left Burnley in 19th place on just 11 points, four less than Luton Town in 18th who have a game in hand, and five less than Everton in 17th, the last to provide survival at the end of the season. Sheffield United remain at the bottom, with just nine points to their name. The Clarets are obviously in severe danger of returning to the Championship for 2024/25, though there is still a long way to go.
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