Liverpool (1) Burnley (0): Sterling Gives the Travelling Kop One Last Present

You eat too much, you drink too much and you don’t get enough sleep — everyone has a hangover in one form or another after the holidays and Liverpool showed they were no exception to the rule at Turf Moor.

A most uneventful first half bled in to a less than memorable second, bar a moment of brilliance from the visitors. Burnley looked more likely to find the breakthrough, but against the run of play, a clever flick from Philippe Coutinho saw the Brazilian release Raheem Sterling to run clear through on goal. It was nothing more than a shimmy and a shake before the 20-year old was rounding Clarets ‘keeper Tom Heaton to make the travelling Kop’s trip to Turf Moor worth it. While, for the most part anyway…

For all the talk of the Reds returning to form following the hustle and bustle we saw Brendan Rodgers side churn out against Manchester United, AFC Bournemouth and Arsenal, there was none of that on display on Boxing Day. To be fair, it was a rather dismal affair — but not one that I’ll complain too loud, or write too much, about.

We talked about turning losses into draws and draws into wins when we were on a roll last year and that’s what we’ve done in our last two matches. Danny Ings may have hit the crossbar, Ashley Barnes may have made a complete hash of the rebound and Simon Mignolet, on for Brad Jones after the Aussie shot-stopper pulled up with a thigh problem in the first half, may have been less an assured between the sticks, but you can only beat what’s in front of you and we did just that.

And that, in my opinion, leaves us with just as many positives as negatives. Sometimes you have to grind out a result; pulling a result when it doesn’t even look like you’re team is up to the challenge isn’t quite as sweet as seeing your team dominate proceedings, but winning ugly is worth just as many points as winning comprehensively.

At this point in time, sitting ninth in the table and going into two matches where points are more than definitely up for the taking, a boost in confidence is exactly what we need. Maybe the draw against Arsenal was more entertaining, but the draw at Turf Moor was worth more points. You get sick and tired of saying that we need to do better, that we need to improve, that we’re not looking as good as we were last year at this time, so I won’t.

We can’t keep playing like this and winning; I know that we need the Arsenal performances to turn into Burnley results, but when you’re trying to claw your way up the table, I’ll take the ugly win with no questions asked each and every time…

–Steven