Scott Parker gives honest assessment of two big decisions from Liverpool’s win at Turf Moor | OneFootball

Liverpool’s win at Turf Moor on Sunday brought a dreaded sense of déjà vu for Scott Parker.

For the second match in succession, the Burnley manager saw his team concede a stoppage time penalty while drawing and ultimately ending up on the losing side, having also been denied a point at the death away to Manchester United a fortnight ago.

Yesterday, the Clarets were on the cusp of a clean sheet against the Premier League champions despite being a player down for the final 10 minutes or so after Lesley Ugochukwu was shown a second yellow card for a foul on Florian Wirtz.

Parker then saw substitute Hannibal Mejbri give away a penalty for a needless handball, and Mo Salah showed no mercy as he buried the spot kick to secure victory for Liverpool.

What did Parker say about the penalty and red card?

The Burnley manager was understandably crestfallen at the stoppage time sting in the tail, but he refused to lay any blame on Michael Oliver for those two major refereeing decisions.

The 44-year-old admitted with admirable honesty (via Liverpool Echo): “It’s probably a penalty. The learning from it for us is that we probably need to train defenders to put their arms behind their back. No complaints with the sending off; it looked like a second yellow.”

(Photo by Matt McNulty/Getty Images)

Fair play to Parker for his honesty

Full credit to Parker for his candid take on those two big calls by Oliver, both of which were correct. It would’ve been easy for a manager on the wrong end of such decisions to cry foul, but the Burnley boss had no issues with either of those.

He’ll have known that Ugochukwu was rash in lunging in on Wirtz when he’d already been shown a yellow card, and he must’ve been seething at Hannibal for giving away such a cheap penalty after his teammates had defended so diligenty for 90 minutes.

While Martin Dubravka didn’t exactly need to pull off a string of heroics saves yesterday, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that Liverpool didn’t deserve to win, having completely dominated the second half in particular (as Roy Keane rightly referenced).

Sky Sports pundit Jay Bothroyd may have disagreed with the red card decision, but when Parker had no complaints over it despite his team being negatively impacted, that speaks volumes.

To lose in stoppage time for the second game in succession will no doubt be tough to take for Burnley, but the defensive organisation they demonstrated yesterday should serve them well if they can maintain it throughout the season.

As for Liverpool, we’ll happily take the three points and be glad to have that banana skin of a fixture out of the way!