Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes, Chris Rowland and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts for 24 hours after the game, and we’ll have all the post-match stats too.

Post-Match Thoughts

Paul Tomkins:

Burnley don’t make it easy. To enjoy football, that is. They make the game a steaming pile of dog turds, and try to drag you down; in horrible conditions, they nearly did, but Liverpool, somewhat poetically, won with a scrappy set-piece, to leave the Reds 14 points ahead of 5th place, and still keeping the idea of a six-pointer at the Etihad on the table.

It’s now just two defeats in 46 games, with Fabinho channeling his inner Robert Lewandowski.

Roberto Firmino’s game has fallen apart after a long spell out with injury, but he’ll still do the hard yards, and he has these dips; obviously now he has more competition for his place, and I think he’s someone who needs to feel relaxed, rather than under pressure, to perform and thrive. But Firmino now has competition in abundance.

It was a game where he and others repeatedly wasted the final pass, turning great breaks into goal-kicks. Virtually every dangerous pass was fluffed, but at the other end, Burnley just ran offside all game.

Deciding when to flag has joined the PGMOL list of great idiocies, along with the use of VAR, which is policed not by the incident on the screen – and the utter clearness of the foul – but whether or not there was an outcry Liverpool last got a penalty.

As there’s an outcry every time Liverpool get a penalty, despite ranking mid-table for penalties during Klopp’s tenure (but with the 2nd-most touches in the opposition box), Liverpool now have to watch clear spot-kicks not just waved away by Martin Atkinson (who has given the Reds one in over 30 games, ever since Steven Gerrard basically called him a dick in his book in 2015), but by Darren England on VAR too. Brilliant.

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