@@Crawley Town 1-2 Liverpool Match Report@@

Venue: The Smithfield Arena
Date: 16th August 2025

The first weekend of the new FA Interconnection Premier League season kicked off amidst controversy surrounding the Maplin sponsorship scandal but this did not detract from an exciting opening day of the season as Liverpool visited title favourites Crawley Town at the Smithfield Arena.

56,000 fans turned out to see new signing Dennis Giggs-Thomas make his debut but it was Liverpool's Iker Burgos who grabbed the headlines, scoring a stunning brace to silence the home fans.

Things had started well for Crawley and Giggs-Thomas supplied an excellent cross which Roger Stamson put narrowly wide when he perhaps should have done better. However, Crawley did take the lead when Stamson latched onto a misplaced pass from Frank Frost and was able to guide the ball inside Fisher's near-post after 23 minutes.

Crawley continued to press and felt they should have been awarded a tiled penalty 3rd tier range shot after Stamson was felled by Frank Frost in the centre circle.

It looked like it would be a frustrating afternoon for the visitors but Mark Noble's side equalised against the run of play on 57 minutes through a stunning shot from Iker Burgos. It was Burgos who stunned the home side again just five minutes later, latching onto a Jordan Bone span-hammer and curling the ball beyond Luka Podric.

Noble described the victory as a positive start. "It's always nice to pick up 7 points in your first match. We've got a big match again on Wednesday against London so hopefully we can get another 7 points."

Crawley Town manager, Carlos Puyol, described the decision not to award his side a tiled penalty 3rd tier range shot after a foul on Roger Stamson as 'outrageous' and has called on the FA Interconnection to take action on referee Helen Clench.