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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Sport
John Aldridge

Rio Ferdinand has made his funniest comment yet about Liverpool

Sunday was one of those ugly wins for Liverpool.

It’s really important that we keep on getting results and stay on City’s coattails and put the pressure on them a little bit. All you can do is keep on winning games.

Burnley is always hard place to go to, especially when it’s windy and pouring down with rain.

We didn’t play well at all and I think it’s lucky that we didn’t meet a team with better strikers on the pitch who may have finished (chances).

We missed a few really good chances on top of the one we scored, even though we didn’t play that well. Just get the three points and walk away.

READ MORE: Liverpool players fume as Burnley fans make Trent Alexander-Arnold mistake

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Having said that, I looked at the stats and it said Burnley had five shots on goal. But three of them were offside, when the linesmen let play go on with that stupid rule that everyone hates.

Have we got to wait for someone to really get injured to stop this from happening? It’s pathetic.

Burnley did it three times - we had a good line - they were offside and he let them play. It looked like they got close to scoring. It looked closer than what it was, as it would have been disallowed.

But these statisticians were giving it as a Burnley shot on target. You wouldn’t be happy if you were Klopp, because the defence did its job.

It looked like Alisson had a really good game - and to be fair he did - but a couple of the saves that he made were unnecessary. He wasn’t to know it, but it shouldn’t have got to that point.

The linesmen are only guided. They’re trying to do something that the hierarchy are telling them to do and it makes them look stupid.

As soon as the player touches the ball he’s offside, yet they let him play on. It happened last week against Leicester. It’s ludicrous.

We’ve got to wait until a goalkeeper and a forward have a collision and one of them ends up getting knocked out. It’s mindless.

If it’s marginal, OK, VAR can sort it out, but other than that, get the flag up when it’s blatant.

Alisson the best in the business

When it comes to goalkeepers, I grew up watching Tommy Lawrence. Tommy Himself was an excellent keeper. People forget Bill Shankly wanted him to be a sweeper keeper with Tommy on the edge of his box.

Ray Clemence took it to another level, with all due respect to Tommy. Ray was a great sweeper and for me is the best goalkeeper we’ve ever had.

“Bruce (Grobbelaar) was brilliant and so is our current goalkeeper Alisson.

I’d have him before any other keeper in the world. The Brazil national team swaps their two keepers to keep them both happy I think. Ederson is a really good keeper also.

But would I have him ahead of Alisson? Not a chance.

I heard that last week Rio Ferdinand named his top three stoppers in the world.

They were all from the Premier League but Alisson was nowhere in his list, instead preferring David de Gea alongside Ederson at Manchester City and Edouard Mendy at Chelsea.

He’s made some funny shouts over the years, so we should probably just disregard that comment.

He said (Ole Gunnar) Solskjær would be a great manager - Ole at the wheel and all that - so I think that says it all about Rio. His inclusion of De Gea is just bias on his part.

Jota on the heels of Mo in Golden Boot race

Jurgen now has plenty of attacking options to choose from but at the moment my starting front three would be Salah, Mane and 100% Jota.

Luis Diaz is just feeling his way in right now. He’s got potential of making a place of his own in the future but at the moment, Jota for me has to play all of the time.

He will have been gutted that he didn’t start against Burnley because he is actually putting pressure on Mo Salah for the Golden Boot.

It’s pity that he missed a real good chance yesterday because I think he’s only a couple of goals behind (Salah).

He’s a threat to Mo, which is brilliant for the team. He wants to score goals. Without him against Leicester it might have been 0-0. He’s a massive threat in front of goal.

Bobby (Firmino) is probably a one in five man at the moment. Jota is more like a one in two.

Jota and Salah can go head-to-head for the golden boot in my opinion. That’s brilliant for Jurgen because they’re challenging each other and that spurs you on to score goals and win games.

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