The Merseyside Derby saves Everton and condemns Liverpool... almost, and nearly
Just as Jurgen Klopp noted fatigue as the one of the primary reasons behind his decision to leave Liverpool, the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park felt like exhaustion catching up with his team.
It’s not quite mathematically certain yet, but the full-time whistle at the end of the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park felt like the end of several different eras. The three-way chase for the Premier League title is now effectively down to two, with Liverpool requiring both Arsenal and Manchester City to drop points in at least two of their remaining matches, while an lengthy unbeaten run against their city rivals away from home which predates Klopp’s 2015 arrival at Anfield is also over and it feels as though Everton have done enough to steer themselves clear of relegation for another year. This might just have been the most significant Premier League game of the season, so far.
The contrast between Liverpool’s lethargy against Everton and Arsenal’s vitality 24 hours earlier against Chelsea was striking. Now fair enough, Everton are fighting for their Premier League lives while Chelsea’s gleaming pile of misshapen parts has more closely resembled aPowell Homerfor much of this season, but even so, while Arsenal found it easy to cut through Mauricio Pochettino’s brie-like defences, Liverpool seemed to be running on empty for much of their midweek match and were ultimately beaten by a team who, on the night, better motivated, better organised, and more resourceful in the use of the ball.
But this has been the pattern of Liverpool’s season for a while now. Losing in the FA Cup to Manchester United in the middle of March seems to have had something of a destabilising effect upon the team, all the more so after they lost a two goal lead there in the Premier League three years later. Since then they’ve lost two out of three against moderate opposition—Crystal Palace and Everton—and were comfortably eliminated from the Europa League by Atalanta.
The goals haven’t been flowing and the defence has been looking creaky. With three of their last games coming against slightly more testing opposition in the form of West Ham United, Spurs and Aston Villa, and they now need both Arsenal and Manchester City to drop points in more than one of their remaining fixtures to have any chance whatsoever of lifting the title.
Considering the way in which Arsenal brushed Chelsea aside an evening earlier and the fact that City still have six games to play and will be focused on the Premier League title following their Champions League defeat to Manchester City, this doesn’t seem especially likely.
This, presumably, is not how Klopp intended the second half of this season to progress when he announced his departure. There’s a case to be made that Liverpool are fading because of their schedule. The high intensity game that Klopp expects from his team may not be suited to the levels that are required for this sort of title race, in which the needle on the compass indicating its final direction will shake wildly with every passing move.
It was, for example, blindingly obvious that both Liverpool and Arsenal losing on the same weekend was handing the title to Manchester City, but this presumption seems to have prevented people from looking a little deeper at why Arsenal might be better positioned to maintain that chase than Liverpool.
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But this evening certainly wasn’t all about Liverpool. Everton were excellent across the pitch. It’s wandering well into the realms of football cliche to suggest that they ‘wanted it more’, but if the cap fits, then it’s best to put it on and wear it with pride.
This was the Goodison Park that everybody loves apart from Liverpool supporters, a grand old lady shaking from head to toe from the rafters under the stresses of 40,000-odd people screaming themselves both literally and metaphorically blue in the face. This, surely, was always going to be a more potent weapon this season than all those “CORRUPT” signs, wasn’t it?
Over the last couple of years, as Everton have looked increasingly exposed by their reckless own, it has started to feel half-forgotten that this is still an excellent team. Jordan Pickford, once you get past the surface-level eccentricities, is an outstanding goalkeeper, possibly their player of the season and an obvious place now to look for experience and passion for the club.
Elsewhere, Jarrad Branthwaite has been an absolute revelation, to the point that Real Madrid have been looking at him, while Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who’s had just appalling luck with injuries for as long as many of us can remember, is back scoring goals again and Dwight McNeil and Abdoulaye Doucoure have been calming and penetrative influences in midfield.. There’s been a sense of purpose coming from this Everton for the whole of April, with only their absolute washout at Chelsea really displaying much of that 21st Century Goodisonian collapsibility that has become so familiar over the last few years.
And if there is any one person who can look back on all of this with a degree of satisfaction, it’s the Everton manager Sean Dyche. There was plenty of consternation when he was called in to try and unravel some of the mess wreaked upon the club by their ‘random new manager generator’ approach to recruitment, and by the end last season it did feel as though he’d managed not much more than the minimum of what would have been expected of him.
This season could be regarded in similar terms. After all, Everton have still only acquired one point fewer than the number of games they’ve played and have spent eleven weeks of this season in the relegation places, while home defeats to Luton and Fulham in the FA and Carabao Cups respectively feel, with the perspective of a little distance, like missed opportunities.
But, as everybody knows, the 2023/24 season hasn’t exactly been a regular one for this particular club, and while it’s popular to assume that these assaults from outside can have a galvanising effect upon a team, they can also not have one and Dyche is to be commended for having got the team through a season which has had challenges thrown at them from all directions. And the sort of bragging rights afforded by beating Liverpool to virtually guarantee your own Premier League survival while taking a giant step toward ending your local rival’s title challenge shouldn’t be taken too lightly.
Is he a longer term solution beyond the fire-fighting that he’s had to undertake over the last fifteen months? Well, regardless of what supporters may or may not think, he’s almost certain to be their choice for next season. He’s had a couple of transfer windows, but these were carried out under considerable financial duress, so what might he be capable of if there is anything like a decent budget behind him?
It seems unlikely that we’ll get an answer to that question this summer because Everton’s finances remain parlous, but the last few weeks have seen such a return to something that feels like normality for the club that it might not a surprise this time around to see that improvement curve continuing to curve in an upward direction.
The future remains precarious. Financial losses run up in recent years haven’t just… gone away. Alisher Usmanov (or rather Alisher Usmanov’s money, since it’s difficult to imagine the return of the man himself) doesn’t seem likely to be returning in the foreseeable future. And should there be any Everton supporters who want something truly righteous to protest over, 777 Partners have been setting off alarm bells all over Europe for a long time now and making their feelings about these chancers becoming involved at their club would be a better of their use of their time than Moshiri-protecting (non-existent) “corruption” within the Premier League.
Things could yet go wrong for Everton, but it seems increasingly clear that the 70th anniversary of their last season outside of the top flight will be marked by the club not travelling back in the opposite direction. And that this should have come at the price of probably ending Liverpool’s championship chase—and Jurgen Klopp’s last—a couple of weeks before the end of the season will have been an extremely satisfying coda to a very pleasing evening. Everton aren’t out of the woods. Not while Moshiri remains and 777 Partners hover in the background. But it’s a start, and in comparison with the last few years at Goodison Park, that’s something.