Liverpool’s 3-0 win at Burnley ensured they moved back into the top four – and Champions League qualification places – with just one game left off the Premier League season.
Jurgen Klopp’s side know that their destiny remains in their own hands as they go into the final fixture of the campaign at home to Crystal Palace on Sunday with 10,000 fans back inside Anfield.
Here’s a round-up of how the national media reported on the match at Turf Moor.
Liverpool within touching distance of the impossible
David Maddock, The Mirror
Somehow, Liverpool are now within touching distance of the impossible.
Barely a month ago, Jurgen Klopp conceded his side needed close to a miracle to qualify for the Champions League, but with this gritty, sleeves-up victory at Burnley, they have given themselves a remarkable opportunity of salvaging a distinctly unremarkable season.
No one at Anfield is claiming much credit from their campaign, but if they can now rescue a top four place from it, then they will have said much about their spirit and desire, because it took plenty of both to get themselves out of the mess they dropped into.
A run of nine games without defeat means they go into the final day in the top four, and realistically, requiring victory to ensure they will once again sit at Europe’s high table next season. With their ever-changing defence, that is some achievement.
One of those long list of centre halves called into unlikely action, Nat Phillips, was heroic here, defending stoutly against Burnley’s desire to ensure Liverpool went into the top four the hard way, scoring his first goal for the club, and then clearing brilliantly from the line.
The spirit of Phillips summed up Liverpool’s response this past month, on an impressive run since their dismal home defeat by relegated Fulham in early March.
But it was the enduring class of Roberto Firmino who set up this fine victory, and see them through into a final day showdown with Leicester and Chelsea that promises fireworks.
Alex Oxlade Chamberlain’s late third goal ensured the equation for that fight is now relatively simple. A win on the final day should do it, given they currently have a superior goal difference of four on Leicester.
This was the semi final, Klopp said. Now to the final against Palace on Sunday. They won’t get a trophy from it, but with this spirit, Liverpool will get the prize they deserve.
Liverpool are almost there - the form of champions may sustain them next season
Ian Ladyman, Daily Mail
So the task ahead of Liverpool is simple. Beat Crystal Palace at Anfield on Sunday and, barring something unexpected happening in Leicester, they can put this strange season behind them and move on.
This victory over a Burnley side that gave it a good go from the first minute took Jurgen Klopp's team ahead of Leicester and in to the top four.
They are only there on goal difference but they are four ahead of Brendan Rodgers' team on that which means that Tottenham would have to get a right walloping at the King Power this weekend for the FA Cup winners to have a chance of reeling Liverpool in.
So, yes, Liverpool are almost there. It has not been the title defence anyone expected but a place in the Champions League next season would mean it will no longer be classed as a disaster, merely very disappointing.
Here at Turf Moor Liverpool were more than good enough and won the game with goals either side of half time from Roberto Firmino and defender Nat Phillips and a late contribution from substitute Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
It has, though, been Liverpool's form over the last two months that has taken them back to the brink of respectability.
Since losing at home to Fulham on March 7, Klopp's team have taken 23 points from 27, winning seven and drawing two. That has been a gutsy effort after a winter of seemingly unrelenting misery. It has, belatedly, been the form of champions and it may sustain them in to next season.
Here they played like a team that knew what was at stake and for long periods they had to. Burnley are not always at their best against the very top sides.
They can seemingly lack a little belief. But on this occasion they were energetic and ambitious. With a little more quality in the final third of the field they could have seriously troubled Liverpool but they have only scored 33 goals all season in the league and that perhaps tells its own story.
Burnley beat Liverpool at Anfield back in January, of course, and for a while Klopp's team could just not win at home.
On Sunday they simply need to. To fail now would be extraordinary even by the standards of this odd season.
Appropriate that the unlikeliest of leaders emerges in this strangest of seasons
Andy Hunter, The Guardian
It is appropriate that in this strangest of seasons Liverpool are on the verge of Champions League qualification courtesy of the unlikeliest of leaders.
After Alisson’s heroics at West Bromwich Albion came Nat Phillips’ commanding night at Burnley; and now only Roy Hodgson, taking charge of Crystal Palace for the final time, stands between them and a fifth successive season among the European elite.
Phillips epitomised Liverpool’s performance at Turf Moor along with the character that has hauled Jürgen Klopp’s team into the top four with one game to play. There was a nervous start, a clinical goal, the defender’s first in a Liverpool shirt, and a resolute display to preserve a valuable clean sheet.
The 24-year-old may not have been near the Liverpool first team but for the injuries that holed their defence of the Premier League title.
Here he steered the late rescue act that has taken Liverpool into the top four at the expense of Leicester on goal difference.
One more win under a manager accustomed to his seasons doing down to the wire, and in front of 10,000 Liverpool fans at Anfield on Sunday, and Liverpool will find redemption in their exhausting campaign.
A centre-half playing like a colossus - Klopp must wish he could start this season again
Chris Bascombe, Daily Telegraph
Liverpool are scoring goals and their centre-half is playing like a colossus. Jurgen Klopp must wish he could start this season again.
Champions League qualification has been transformed from the improbable to the likely after a 3-0 victory over Burnley. Roberto Firmino steadied the nerves and Nat Phillips doubled the lead before Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s 89th minute strike had the potential to be as critical in Klopp’s top four bid.
If Liverpool and Chelsea win this Sunday, Leicester must now defeat Tottenham Hotspur by five goals to have any hope.
Not that Klopp will take a last day win against Crystal Palace for granted. He will be enthused that his side is playing its best football since September. This had all the class, guile and guts that made Liverpool champions a year ago.
They’ve won seven and drawn two of their last nine games. Yes, we can conclude rumours of Liverpool’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Typifying the revival is Phillips, the sixth choice emergency centre-half who gave a performance so accomplished at both ends of Turf Moor, it was rather like he had absorbed the spirit of Virgil Van Dijk.
Naturally, we can point to Phillips’ first Liverpool goal, a header early in the second half, as his highlight. That scratches the surface of his contribution.
He played like he would have dived in front of a recently fired cannonball to stop Burnley scoring.
Phillips’ goal line clearance to stop James Tarkowski halving the deficit midway through the second half ensured Liverpool could see through the final stage without fear.
He chased, intercepted and scrapped for every challenge with the formidable Burnley striker Chris Wood.
The 23-year-old from Bolton was bound to feel at home in his native Lancashire, but his transformation is incredible.
Liverpool knew it would be like this, which is why they headed into this final sequence of games against West Bromwich Albion, Burnley and Crystal Palace with as much trepidation as hope.
The fact their opponents had nothing left to play for was never going to compromise their effort.
The game felt like a cup tie, played in that kind of atmosphere as the fans savoured every opportunity to jeer the opponent and objectionable refereeing decisions.
If they finish the job, Klopp will add the 2020-201 race for the top four to his list of greatest Liverpool comebacks.
Casket looked to be closing but there's now greater belief Liverpool could crawl over the line
Melissa Reddy, Independent
Liverpool will look at the Premier League table a little longer and a little harder. A fourth straight triumph, taking their unbeaten top-flight run to nine games, is shaping up as a story of flipping the middle finger to setbacks and doing the unthinkable.
A resolute Burnley were defeated 3-0 at Turf Moor to move Liverpool above Leicester City into that all-important position four in the standings, one point off Chelsea.
The scale of their injury crisis for the majority of the season and the manner in which they would repeatedly surrender, especially at Anfield, did not fit the plot of finding some kind of silver lining.
Yet here they are. By the end of February, the casket was already closing on Liverpool’s top-four thinking.
Jurgen Klopp referred to qualifying for the Champions League in the past tense as domestic victories started to feel like a distant memory from an altogether different era.
But then slowly and quietly, before the storming of Old Trafford and the drama of a goalkeeper winner at the death, the Merseysiders were showing signs of life.
This materialised in grit and grinding out wins, navigating testing opening periods and scoring at crucial junctures in-game.
The trend continued at Burnley, where Roberto Firmino’s finish on 43 minutes past debutant Will Norris settled some nerves and injected greater belief that Liverpool could crawl over that Champions League line.
