Salah's Stoppage-Time Penalty Ends 90 Minutes of Liverpool Siege

Très Divertissant Score Futmetrix: 72/100. A suffocating display of attacking dominance undone only by Liverpool's profligacy—until the final whistle turned mercy into vindication.

When Defending Becomes Futile

Burnley came to Anfield with a single mission: survive. For 84 minutes, they did. Then Lesley Ugochukwu lunged, the referee pointed, and the Intensity shifted seismically. What had been a grinding battle of attrition became an execution. Liverpool's 27-shot barrage—a 9-to-1 dominance—finally found its target when Mohamed Salah stepped up in the 90th minute to convert a penalty that felt less like fortune and more like mathematical inevitability.

The Stakes were suffocating. Burnley sit 17th, clinging to survival. Liverpool, perched atop the table with four consecutive wins, couldn't afford complacency. Yet for nearly the entire match, the narrative seemed written in futility: Liverpool's 14 corners, their 81% possession, their 4 shots on target—all met by Burnley's stubborn, desperate resistance. Burnley's goalkeeper made three saves. Their defenders threw bodies in front of shots. Their midfield chased shadows.

Then came the red card in the 84th minute. Ugochukwu's dismissal didn't change the match's trajectory—it merely accelerated it. With 10 men, Burnley crumbled. Six minutes later, the penalty arrived, and Salah—clinical as ever—buried it. The Balance shifted from tension to conclusion in a single moment.

Van Dijk's Silent Masterclass

Virgil van Dijk (8.2 rating) orchestrated Liverpool's defensive architecture without fanfare. Alongside Ibrahima Konaté (7.6), he transformed what could have been a chaotic afternoon into controlled dominance. Van Dijk's positioning was immaculate; his reading of Burnley's rare counterattacking moments, prescient. When a match is decided by siege—by overwhelming shot volume and corner pressure—the defenders who prevent panic become invisible heroes.

Burnley's xG of 0.13 tells the story of a team that never truly threatened. Liverpool's 2.65 xG, paired with 27 total shots, paints a portrait of relentless pressure meeting stubborn resistance. The red card was merely punctuation on a sentence already written.