Burnley’s Ashley Barnes celebrates his winning penalty
Liverpool suffered a shock 1-0 defeat to Burnley at Anfield on Thursday evening, putting an end to their 68-match unbeaten home record in the Premier League. Liverpool’s last league loss on their own ground was against Crystal Palace in April 2017.
Ashley Barnes’ 83rd-minute penalty, awarded after the Burnley striker was brought down by goalkeeper Alisson, decided the contest after Jurgen Klopp’s side failed to get on the scoresheet for the fourth straight Premier League game.
Divock Origi had struck the crossbar for Liverpool in the first half, when he only had Burnley goalkeeper Nick Pope to beat, and Roberto Firmino missed a good chance after the break.
Liverpool are fourth in the league on 34 points, six behind leaders Manchester United. Burnley move up to 16th place, with 19 points.
Klopp accepted the blame for the result, which he described as a “massive punch in the face”, and admitted it would be “silly” to talk about retaining the title now.
“It was a massive, massive punch in the face,” Klopp said. “It’s my responsibility, that’s the easy explanation. We lost the game which is pretty impossible but we did it. That is my fault… Losing against Burnley and we didn’t score for three or four games, to talk about the title race, how silly would that be? We can’t imagine the title race at this minute.”
Burnley boss Sean Dyche was understandably in higher spirits. He said: “It was a real shift from the players. A tremendous amount of effort has to go into these performances when you play at grounds like this. I don’t think there’s a major wobble at Liverpool. They have had a few sticky results but that can happen, even to the best teams.”
Man of the match: Ben Mee (Burnley).
Match highlights: