It’s nice when a game goes pretty much as expected and how it should do. I said it when we played Arsenal, that was a game where we should be twatting them because they’re just perfectly set up for us to exploit. And exploit we did. This one was a little different in that it had nothing to do with their style of play being a good match up for us, it was just a case of us being miles better than them. They shouldn’t be able to live with us, and it turns out they couldn’t.
The only way we were not going to win this game, and win it handsomely, would be if we went out there and basically threw up all down ourselves. Everton have nothing that we should be worried about. They’re a lower/mid table team, without their main goal threat, they’re in terrible form and their fans fucking hate them. Everything was pointing to a big away win for us and that’s what happened.
That doesn’t make it any less enjoyable though. This was fucking boss. It was an absolute beatdown and even though the game appeared to be in the balance for a time when it was 2-1, realistically it was never really in doubt given the huge gulf in class between the two sides.
The home crowd were furious, obviously. They always are. The life of an Everton presents two options. Misery or anger. Sometimes the two cross over, but generally Blues fall into one category or the other. It must be the most miserable of existences. In terms of this game though I don’t know what they were wanting from their team. They were booed off, the atmosphere was toxic and Rafa will bear a lot of the brunt of it.
Here’s the thing, and this isn’t a defence of Benitez in any way. I haven’t done that since some time around late 2008. This is simply a fact. Everton are not a good football team, irrespective of who the manager is. Liverpool on the other hand, are probably the best team in the world when firing on all cylinders, which we are pretty close to doing at the moment.
United lost 5-0 at home to us. Arsenal and Southampton were swept aside 4-0. Watford, who beat Everton 4-1 the other week, conceded five to us a week prior to that. So I would ask Evertonians, what exactly did you expect here? You can’t live with us. We’re in a completely different league currently and if this game was played ten times, this probably wouldn’t even be the biggest beating you’d take. That’s not bravado, or gloating, or any of that. It’s just a fact.
Look at how we started this game. We had two gilt edged chances in the first two minutes. The opening 20 minutes of this game we were imperious and much better sides than Everton wouldn’t have been able to cope with it. You could see that our lads had a score to settle after the two derby games last season and there was just no way Everton were going to be able to withstand that.
The Blues can get angry with Rafa and their players all they like, but it’s stupid. It’s like putting Ronnie Corbett in the ring with Mike Tyson and then berating him when he gets battered. This was a mismatch, pure and simple.
We went into this game with our best eleven players (you can argue the toss over Bobby and Jota if you like, but I don’t think that’s even really a debate now with how dangerous Jota is) and our best eleven players are scary as fuck. You hear all the time from opposing players and managers just how hard it is to play against us, so a team with Michael Keane as the defensive lynchpin and Saloman Rondon leading the line is always going to be in trouble.
From the opening seconds our lads were right at it. We forced a corner immediately and Matip should have scored. Poor header that, but he is very much hit and miss in those situations. A minute later Mo should have scored when for some reason he went with his left foot rather his head from a Robbo cross. In fairness he was probably expecting Pickford to being doing something mad, such as flying through the air with his boot raised like Bruce Lee.
The Blues were rattled right from the start of the game. It’s almost like they knew they’d angered the beast last season and now was the moment they were getting what was coming to them. Coleman and Pickford had a big bust up within seconds, which showed how on edge they were.
Imagine how Evertonians must have been feeling. Two minutes, two absolutely glorious chances for us. They knew they were in for a long night. A blue in Adrianna’s school group chat posted that he’d switched it off after that second chance. Smart kid, he knew what was coming and wasn’t going to upset himself by watching it. Same with some of the fans who’d actually paid for tickets, although they waited longer than two minutes before bailing on their team. Many of them left when the second goal went in though, one of them clearly making a “wall pushers” gesture to the away end as he left.
It was like the Alamo back there for the Blues and Pickford had to make a really smart save to get down low and turn away a close range Mo shot after another cross by Robbo, who was running riot down that left wing.
The goal had to come eventually and it was no surprise it originated down that left side again. Hendo played a ball up to Sadio who did well to head it to himself before playing in Robbo. His cutback was definitely meant for Sadio but it ended up falling perfectly to the onrushing Hendo, 28 yards out on his left foot. Be honest, who fancied him to put that away? Not me. On his right foot, yeah I’d have said there was a decent chance he’d convert. I didn’t see that finish coming though. Stunning. Absolutely perfect strike, started it a foot outside the post and curled it back inside to give Pickford no chance.
The goal provoked a bit of a response from Everton who tried to push forward a bit and strike back. Big mistake, as that just gave us more room to pick them apart. One of their ‘attacks’ broke down and before you knew it Hendo was sending Salah racing clear past the hapless Lucas “better than Robertson ye no lad” Digne. Everyone knew what Mo wanted to do, including Pickford, but he did it anyway.
It doesn’t take much for me to blame Pickford for anything, but I don’t think he could have done much there. If he’d moved a step or two over to cover that corner, he’d have left a massive gap at his near post and Mo could have just rolled it in there. This goal was brilliance from Salah, it was not an error from Pickford.
2-0 though and it looked like it was going to be a landslide. A scoreline for the ages. Then the game kind of got a bit scrappy. They were throwing in a few tackles and Thiago was repeatedly being pulled up for phantom free kicks that slowed our momentum. It was mad how often their players resorted to diving though wasn’t it? I expected heavy challenges, but I wasn’t expecting diving like that from anyone other than that Richarlison cunt. Amazingly, he didn’t do it at all while his team-mates were throwing themselves all over the gaff.
Paul Tierney deserves a lot of credit for how he handled it. He booked Townsend for a dive and then he did the same thing to Gray. It’s really difficult for refs as they only get one look at these incidents and it’s quite a big call to essentially just call a player a cheat when there’s always the possibility that there was contact that you didn’t see. He was dead right on both of those though.
He would later miss perhaps the most blatant dive of them all when Gordon went flying through the air after zero contact from anybody. Tierney awarded a free-kick for that but I can’t criticise him for that as I’m not sure there’s a referee on the planet that would have booked a third home player for diving in the same game. He was always going to give one of them because apart from anything else, he must have thought “there’s no way they’re still diving after I’ve booked two of the cunts. It must have been a foul”.
That free-kick indirectly led to our third goal but I’ll get to that shortly. In between our second and third goals it didn’t go too well. I think the problem was we didn’t score a quick third goal. At 2-0 and with chances being created at will, Everton were on the verge of being knocked out completely. The crowd were fearing the mother of all beatings, as were the players. But the third goal didn’t come straight away and slowly but surely Everton’s players gained a bit of hope. Not so much hope that they’d get anything from the game, but that maybe they’d weathered the worst of the storm.
Allan was booked for a foul on Jota, who was furious and was demanding a red card. I didn’t think it was that bad. A yellow was fine, but Jota was needling them all night. He’s got that little bit of snark in him and I love that. Tempers were getting a bit frayed at that point though and I was fairly sure there would be a red card for someone. They had more players in the book than we did, but Thiago was a concern for me.
He was booked for ‘persistent fouling’ but there was nothing in anything he was penalised for. One free-kick against him was laughable as he was just stood still, having his shirt pulled by Townsend, who then went down and was given the decision. That contributed to the yellow card so that pissed me off, mainly because it put Thiago at risk. We know he likes to stick his foot in at times when he probably shouldn’t and that was the only chance Everton had of getting anything from the game.
As it got scrappy and we stopped playing our high intensity football, the game became more even. They had the ball as much as we did, and while they didn’t look particularly dangerous they were at least carrying some threat now and spent a bit of time in our half. And then they scored. It was a good goal too from their perspective. Not so good from ours.
I thought Trent was too slow getting over to cover behind Matip and that left a big gape for Gray to run into. He got a bit lucky with the finish as it went through Alisson’s legs, but I thought he was the only Everton player that looked even remotely dangerous. He’s only been there five minutes but he looks too good for them. He should be looking to move on to a more competitive team, like West Ham or Villa.
It was proper annoying that we found ourselves only 2-1 up though considering the huge gulf in class. I wouldn’t say I was worried, but I was frustrated and in the back of my mind there was a concern that they might nick another and if it got to 2-2 then who knows.
The more likely scenario was we’d go in at half time and Klopp would tell them to raise the intensity and show them where the space was to attack, and make sure they got a grip of Gray who was the only one capable of hurting us. And that’s what happened.
The game was kind of in the balance for a while though as it was only 2-1, even though it was clear that we were vastly superior to them. When they were awarded that free-kick for the Gordon dive, that could have been a pivotal moment for them. I thought Digne would have taken it but instead it was Townsend. He liked it too, but Virgil was in the wall and he jumped, meaning that’s a really difficult task getting the ball over him and back down onto the target. He couldn’t do it, Virgil got his head on it and it went behind for a corner from which we scored.
I say this all the time but I genuinely think we must have scored more goals from opposition corners than they have. The funny thing is we actually bring everybody back to defend them, which might lull the opponent into a false sense of security. Usually we clear the first ball in but the second ball will often fall to one of their players outside the box. They then have the choice to knock it back in, or play safe and go backwards.
In this case, Doucoure played it back to Coleman on halfway but it was an awkward ball to control and he had Salah bearing down on him. He should have just knocked it forward, but the risk there is when you do that it will probably be headed clear by us and then we’ll have four or five players screaming forward at 100mph on the break.
So Coleman tried to control it, made a mess of it and was robbed by Mo. He still had a lot to do but he carried it forward, stayed ahead of Coleman and then rolled it wide of Pickford into the far corner. The finish reminded me of Owen against Arsenal in Cardiff. Didn’t need power, just directed it where it needed to go.
And that was game over. The pyro came on the pitch from the away end as our lads celebrated in the red smoke. Everton weren’t coming back from that, it was now just a case of how hard we wanted to push for more goals. We didn’t push that hard, but I don’t think we settled for what we had either. The lads wanted to humiliate the Blues after the shit that went down last season.
No-one wanted it more than Virg, although I didn’t like it when he pulled rank on a free-kick at 2-1 and took the ball off Trent. He’s maybe taken one free-kick for us in four years, but because he was desperate to put one past Pickford he let that get the better of him. If we were two or three goals up then I don’t care if he wants to take a shot from inside his own half. Go for it. At 2-1 now I didn’t like it, especially as Trent scored with the last free-kick he took.
It’s a minor quibble though and I obviously understand where Virgil’s head was at there. I just didn’t think that was the time for that.
Klopp brought Thiago off and sent Milner on. Smart move, and Milner was fucking boss I thought. So was Thiago, but that yellow card made it an obvious substitution to make. The fourth goal was probably my favourite of the night. The touch from Jota was sublime. The finish was great too, although Pickford left a big gap and did his best to make himself look small.
So much of what Jota does reminds me of Fowler. I’m not putting him at Robbie’s level as he isn’t the kind of football genius that Fowler was. But loads of his goals have got that look of Fowler about them, this one included.
Ox came on for Hendo and Taki got a late run out for Jota. Not gonna lie, I’m disappointed we didn’t send Divock on just to rub their noses in it even more. He’s Everton’s bogeyman and I wanted to see him out there, especially as he might have wrapped it up with yet another goal against them.
The away end had a great time. Some of them will have been at Old Trafford too. They’ll remember those two games for the rest of their lives as there’s nothing quite like being able to take the piss out of your big rivals. Everton aren’t exactly rivals in a football sense anymore and haven’t been for some time. They’re rivals geographically now. That’s it.
And now they’ve got Rafa as their manager which just makes it even funnier taking the piss. The “Rafa’s at the wheel” chant was funny as fuck. The La Bamba song got an airing too. Partly I’m sure out of affection for Rafa but mostly to rub Evertonian noses in it.
Some of the videos from full time are hilarious. The booing, the abuse of Kenwright and Brands, and all the while you can hear the “Merry Christmas Everton” song belting out from the away end. Just glorious.
I think the best video I saw was a red who was sat in with their fans, undercover, and at the end he was joining in with the booing and shouting “time to go lad”. At one point you could even hear him shout “where’s the Arteta money, Bill?” Just fucking sensational stuff. Well played that lad.
So the score is somewhat settled after last season although I still feel an absolute honking at Anfield is required to fully make them pay. I expect that to happen too, but that’s a long way off and there’s a lot of football to be played before then.
We’re in a great run of form now and look like we’re in the groove. Everyone is playing well and picking a star man wasn’t that easy. I mean, I knew who I was giving it to but there were others in the conversation too. Mo was brilliant and scored twice, Jota was lively through out, Robbo is back to his best again. Trent was class, Matip was imperious, Fabinho was Fabinho. But Henderson was the best player on the pitch. What a fucking performance from him.
Next up it’s Wolves. I’ll start to think about that probably about 10 minutes before kick off. Until then I’ll just bask in the glow of this one. What a team these lads are.
Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Henderson (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Thiago (Milner); Salah, Jota (Minamino), Mané:
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