Ashley Barnes fails to provide twist that Jürgen Klopp wished for | Nick Ames
Once bitten, twice shy. All week Manchester City had been warned that Burnley, a banana skin and wrecking ball in one grimly-organised package, had it in their gift to ruin everything. They had been held to a draw here 14 months ago, not that it ultimately mattered, and the thought of a repeat was enough to set spines tingling across Merseyside. Yet by the end it was Ilkay Gündogan, rather than a home player, who was being yellow carded for delaying a set-piece and City, as opposed to Jürgen Klopp’s team, who again wrested a level of control they are unlikely to let slip. You might not thrash Burnley here; you might only edge past them by 29.51mm. This, though, felt like a deflating blow for City’s rivals given the hopes they had invested in the buildup.
This cleanest-cut of title races had finally been injected with a shot of mild mischief by Klopp. He had taken the trouble to observe that Turf Moor was not a venue he would wish upon his own side in high-stakes circumstances; Keegan versus Ferguson it was not, partly because Pep Guardiola refused to play along, but as a minimum it enhanced the idea that the south Pennines might be the place league-winning dreams go to die.
Continue reading...from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/apr/28/ashley-barnes-twist-jurgen-klopp
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