Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 1 Burnley 1 in the 2025-2026 Premier League at Anfield…
LIVERPOOL have now failed to beat any of the newly promoted sides at home this season.
Today was the best of the shitshows. By a distance. Burnley are knackered and have been worked. Liverpool have had a whole host of chances and missed a penalty. It is only seven or eight minutes Liverpool look a wreck. Injury-time is dreadful but you can have one of them from time to time.
But it still isn’t good enough.
You can have one of these from time to time. That’s our song. That’s our defining feature.
Liverpool’s season is disintegrating into that though – over and over and over one of these you can have from time to time. But in the act of having one of them from time to time almost all the time an entire campaign can get away from you.
And a ground can get away from you. Anfield was restless today; perhaps almost unfairly so but poor performances and results are like silt, like lint, like untreated sewage. Finally they block. Finally matters spill over. Finally things stop working as they should. Processes collapse.
Everyone is unhappy. Everyone is.
Liverpool have 10 minutes of confused, frustrating, pass-poor, disorganised football in the second-half and Burnley score. It’s these games that characterise this season of grim anxiety. These games that happen from time to time.
We play well in the first-half. We come out brightly and then somewhere around the 55th minute the twig snaps under foot, the mist descends and the horror show starts. Like tired and hungry children, the crowd is in a bad mood at this.
Why wouldn’t we be in a bad mood? Anfield is more arduous than it needs to be. More unreliable than it needs to be. Unpredictable but in a negative way.
In the first-half, Wirtz shows what he is up for, more physically confident than he has been before, Gravenberch and Szoboszlai providing the midfield levers we have needed. Ekitike is getting the Mo Salah-three-defenders on one treatment and as a result we are trying again and again to slot the ball down the left-hand side.
Frimpong is doing what he does best by creating space on the right but to no real avail.
Dominik Szobozlai missing a penalty half way through the first-half is disappointing but not portentous. It doesn’t spell disaster but with hindsight it spells the kind of bad luck you make when you can’t look at a rake without stepping on it.
When our goal comes, it’s good. It is the icing on the cake for a Florian Wirtz performance that is better and better as the first-half wears on. Well weighted and well timed, just before half-time. He is our best player by a distance. We collectively hope that this structure, these passes, these silken shapes and the domination of Liverpool in possession will continue through to the end.
But we are to be disappointed in our hopes.
Of course Burnley were going to sit back and defend. This is not the most Burnley side you’ve ever seen but it is unmistakably Burnley. Scott Parker is no Sean Dyche but he’s no fool either and he has set his team up to frustrate.
Cody Gakpo offered little. Hugo Ekitike was largely trapped. And when all goes wrong in the second-half, Curtis Jones can’t pass a ball. We have to be better than this. The Burnley goal is chancy and quick but it is also somehow visible from space. We are disorganised and they catch us out. An obvious risk. A frustrating watch.
The manager needs to honestly appraise what’s wrong. That’s confidence and skill, determination and organisation. Give them strength. Give us strength. Give us belief.
The manager seems stuck in the weeds and stuck wanting control in every moment. But you cannot control every moment. The game doesn’t work that way. It so often laughs at those who try to do that. He cannot work his risk/reward balance out or his players can’t and that amounts to the same thing.
Belief is the thing. By 90 no one believes. Against the poorest side in the division no one believes. This is no way to play and to play is to live. Today could have been similar and 3-0. But to do that you have to want it. Show will. Liverpool were poor at 1-0 and were punished for it because they didn’t show faith in the how and why of getting to three.
It is a tough trot. But today is a strong side with a weak bench and again too many players are ran for too long.
We have been through worse than this, and honestly? These are good players playing without conviction. Sort it out, Liverpool. No one needs this.
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60 minutes was a good watch, quicker, smarter and cohesive. I think 3:0 would have been more than fair. Unfortunately Liverpool have flaws, the biggest being disorganised when attacked, even by crap teams. We have wonderful defenders and the world’s best keeper, but if those in front, those meant to shield and intercept simply melt away and allow journeymen players to run unchecked, then the lads at the back can only plug so many gaps. After watching every home game and a few aways since Slot took over I am no nearer understanding what sort of team Slot wants us to be, and I guess neither does he
Slot should’ve ben sacked in the tunnel after that Forest debacle two months ago. Cowardly football.