Fabinho helps Liverpool avoid Burnley 'banana skin' after attritional contest

Liverpool have the two top scorers in the Premier League this season. While Mohamed Salah and Diogo Jota reign supreme in the division, no one at Anfield has more goals in 2022 than Fabinho. He entered the calendar year with four in his Liverpool career. A fifth since then secured victory at Burnley after a first half that was more fraught than the scoreline suggested. The theory is that successful seasons invariably involve examples of winning without playing fluently and this was one.

If campaigns that end in disappointment feature fine displays that go unrewarded, Burnley may have proved that. For 45 minutes, the bottom club posed Liverpool problems in inimitable fashion. This was an old-fashioned examination, an attritional game against a physical, forceful team in awful weather.

Liverpool prevailed in part because of an improved second-half display, with Virgil van Dijk at the heart of it. “Everything today was set up to be a banana skin for us,” said Jurgen Klopp. “The wind was coming in from all directions. It was ridiculous. I am absolutely delighted with the way we played the circumstances, it was so tricky.”

But while Liverpool have scored some spectacular goals under him, this seemed among the scruffiest. It was nonetheless typical. No side has scored more Premier League goals this season from set-pieces and if Trent Alexander-Arnold’s prowess as a taker is a factor, so was the nose for goal Fabinho had long kept concealed.

They created very little in open play – an early shot from Naby Keita that Nick Pope parried, a late effort from substitute Jota and an Alexander-Arnold cross that Ben Mee almost turned into his own net – but two of Alexander-Arnold’s dead-ball deliveries showed they have another avenue.