We look ahead to this evening kick-off in the Premier League with our Burnley vs Liverpool prediction and preview. Can Liverpool keep up their winning run on Boxing Day with all three points at Turf Moor?
Burnley vs Liverpool Stats: The Quick Hits
- Liverpool are predicted to win this game against Burnley, with the pre-match Opta supercomputer simulations seeing them win 59% of the time.
- Jürgen Klopp has won all five of his Premier League games on Boxing Day, by an aggregate score of 17-1.
- Burnley have lost eight of their nine Premier League home games so far this season, winning the other 5-0 against Sheffield United.
Match Preview
Second-placed side Liverpool travel to second-from-bottom Burnley on Boxing Day, looking to get three points that would temporarily send them top of the Premier League. With Arsenal not playing until 28 December and Aston Villa needing a five-goal swing and a win at Old Trafford versus Manchester United in their favour to move above Jürgen Klopp’s side, a win would be enough to take the lead.
Boxing Day has been enjoyable for Klopp in the past. He’s won all five of his Premier League games on Boxing Day by an aggregate score of 17-1. No manager has a better 100% record in the competition on December 26th (Mauricio Pochettino also 5/5).
Burnley will be buoyed by their pre-Xmas win away at Fulham and an unexpected three points in this match would take them level with 17th-place Nottingham Forest, if Nuno Espírito Santo’s side don’t get a result at Newcastle in the day’s early kick-off.
Mohamed Salah will be expected to be Liverpool’s biggest goal threat once again in this match. The Egyptian scored his 12th Premier League goal of the season to move within two goals of league top scorer Erling Haaland (14) in the 1-1 draw with Arsenal on Saturday. Salah also has a joint-league high seven assists in 2023-24. While he’s been in a rich vein of form, attacking team-mate Darwin Núñez has struggled of late and will be hoping to end an 11-game scoreless run across all competitions, in which he’s attempted 32 shots across 720 minutes.
Wilson Odobert moved level with Lyle Foster and Josh Brownhill on three Premier League goals for Burnley this season with his strike at Fulham on Saturday. At 19 years and 25 days old, he’s the youngest player to score more than once in the competition in 2023-24.
Jay Rodriguez came off the bench to make his 250th appearance in the win at Fulham and could force his way into the starting XI here if Burnley boss Vincent Kompany thinks the three-day gap between games might be too much for some of his attacking players. Both Jack Cork and Johann Gudmundsson are likely to be passed fit in time to make this clash, however.
Recent Form
Liverpool missed the chance to move to the top of the Premier League table for Christmas 2023 with their 1-1 draw at Anfield against Arsenal on Saturday evening. Three points in that match would have sent them top, but despite having home advantage, they weren’t able to seal a victory. That draw does, though, mean that Liverpool go into this clash with Burnley on an 11-game unbeaten run in the Premier League (W6 D5) – currently the longest in the competition.
They will be keen to get back to winning ways, however, after back-to-back draws with Manchester United (0-0) and Arsenal (1-1) at Anfield. Their last two away games in the Premier League have seen them beat Sheffield United 2-0 and Crystal Palace 2-1, the latter coming thanks to an added-time winner from Harvey Elliott. They’ve only lost one of their last 29 Premier League games, but that was away from home, in Spurs’ 2-1 victory on 30 September 2023 – a game that they only went behind in in added time after going down to nine men.
Burnley enjoyed a win on Saturday at Fulham, running out 2-0 victors thanks to goals from Odobert and Sander Berge with their only two shots on target in the match. That ended a run of just one point gained from three league games against Wolves, Brighton and Everton.
Kompany’s side have lost eight of their nine Premier League home games so far this season, winning the other 5-0 against Sheffield United. Only four times in their top-flight history have they lost more at Turf Moor in a single campaign – nine in 1970-71, 1975-76 and 2020-21, and 10 in 2018-19.
Liverpool have won their last six Premier League Boxing Day games since a 2-1 loss at Man City in 2013-14. It’s their longest winning run on the day in their league history. Burnley have lost five of their last seven league games on Boxing Day (W1 D1), with their only win in that time coming against Middlesbrough in the Premier League in 2016-17.
Burnley vs Liverpool Head-to-Head
Burnley are currently on a run of three successive defeats against Liverpool, failing to score in any of those games. Overall, they have won just two of their 16 Premier League games against Liverpool (D2 L12), winning 2-0 at home in August 2016, and 1-0 away in January 2021.
Liverpool have won seven of their eight Premier League away games against Burnley (L1), their highest away win rate (88%) against any side they’ve faced at least five times on the road in the competition. The last of these came in February 2022, when a 40th-minute Fabinho goal sealed a 1-0 win at Turf Moor.
The last Burnley player to score a goal against Liverpool was Ashley Barnes in January 2021. That goal came from the penalty spot, seven minutes from time and ended the Reds’ 68-game unbeaten home run in the Premier League to seal Burnley’s first win at Anfield since 1974.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off in this Premier League match, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Burnley vs Liverpool Opta Player Ratings
The Opta Player Ratings are something we introduced ahead of 2023-24. For a quick primer on how they’re calculated, you can check our explainer here.
Before kick-off in this match, here are the top five performing players from both teams in the 2023-24 Premier League according to the Opta Player Ratings:
Burnley
Josh Cullen: 62.6 (out of 100)
Jóhann Gudmundsson: 61.5
Lyle Foster: 60.4
Josh Brownhill: 60.0
Sander Berge: 59.6
Liverpool
Alisson Becker: 77.0 (out of 100)
Mohamed Salah: 76.8
Trent Alexander-Arnold: 75.4
Virgil van Dijk: 74.8
Dominik Szoboszlai: 74.6
These Opta Player Ratings also power our set of brand-new, free-to-play gaming experiences, which you can play on Opta Analyst all season long.
Burnley vs Liverpool Prediction
The Opta supercomputer predicts a Liverpool win against Burnley at Turf Moor on Boxing Day, with the away side being given a 59% chance of picking up all three points in the pre-match projections. Burnley are being given a 16.3% chance, while there is a 24.7% likelihood of the points being shared.
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