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Everton (H) Premier League - 4/12/19 - 20:15


Bjornebye
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This is a scathing article.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/dec/05/liverpool-rivalry-everton-anfield-derby

 

Quote

For Liverpool, rivalry with Everton is matter of history not current concern

Jonathan LiewLast modified on Thu 5 Dec 2019 01.10 GMT

Home team rested key players, underperformed all over the pitch and treated game like a perfunctory training session

A rivalry is only really a rivalry if both protagonists want the same thing. They don’t have to be evenly matched, but they do need to share a target. Think Richard III and Henry VII. Ali and Foreman. Girls Aloud and One True Voice. Alas, it’s been a while since this was the case on Merseyside. Liverpool v Everton may be a treasured heritage fixture. But as these 90 skittish, uneven minutes demonstrated, it’s no longer much more than that.

The game ended with Liverpool eight points clear at the top, 11 points clear of Manchester City. With Everton in the bottom three, still two decades without a win here. But you didn’t need to know any of that to grasp the divergence in priorities. It was in the tone and feel of the game, the suck and blow of the Anfield atmosphere, who wanted the ball and who didn’t. Liverpool wanted to win. Evertonjust wanted to compete.

Derbies are supposed to challenge the cold mathematics of the league table. To upend orthodoxies. And indeed, there were fleeting moments here when Everton threatened to drag this game into strange and unconventional places. Their response to going 2-0 down within 17 minutes was impressively defiant. For all the heat on Marco Silva, who may yet be out of a job by the time you read this, there was no sense of implosion, of tools being downed. Curiously, Everton look more like a flawed team trying to rebuild under a new manager than a doomed team trying to shake off an old one.

Indeed, there was one side here who desperately wanted it more. Unusually, it was the team who ended up losing 5-2. This wasn’t a conventional walloping, in that Liverpool really weren’t very good: four first-team players left on the bench, some uncharacteristic daydreaming in defence and a strange translucence to them for large periods. Jürgen Klopp looked on the verge of boredom as he spoke afterwards about “respecting the opposition” as if he had just dispatched a plucky lower-league team in the third round of the Carabao Cup. In demeanour and in deed Liverpool’s ennui spoke volumes. Everton wanted to turn the city blue. Liverpool just wanted to pick up the three points and turn their attentions to Bournemouth on Saturday.

And so a pattern was set early on. Almost immediately from kick-off Liverpool launched the first of many dangerous incursions. Everton’s back five and midfield three squeezed themselves tight as if huddling around a campfire. Up front on his own, Dominic Calvert-Lewin steeled himself for a long and lonesome night. Liverpool wanted to lay waste. Everton just wanted to contain. On seven minutes Sadio Mané slipped a dangerous ball in behind the defence. Michael Keane wanted Jordan Pickford to claim it. Pickford wanted Keane to clear it. Divock Origi wanted the ball, and in the split-second of Everton indecision he was rounding the keeper and putting Liverpool ahead.

Yet somewhere in amongst the flurry of first-half goals a real contest briefly and thrillingly tried to break out. Emboldened by Liverpool’s imprecision, Everton continued to chip away. Adam Lallana tried about four heel turns in a row and ended up losing the ball in his own half. Trent Alexander-Arnold, who for all his angelic comportment possesses an occasional and delightful snide streak, was lucky to escape with yellow for stepping on Lucas Digne. All over the pitch second balls were being forsaken, passes trickling straight out of play. “Fucking WAKE UP!‚“ an exasperated Liverpool fan in the Main Stand bellowed as the home side struggled to clear their lines.

But for the most part Liverpool were content to drift serenely back to port. Mané, otherwise pin-sharp, missed two stone-cold chances to make the game safe long before Gini Wijnaldum’s 90th-minute clincher. Xherdan Shaqiri pulled off a couple of louche stepovers. As Everton ran out of puff, Liverpool cruised to victory without ever remotely threatening to raise their level.

Sadio Mané goes round Everton’s goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford. Photograph: Alex Dodd - CameraSport/CameraSport via Getty Images

This, perhaps, was the most telling indictment of where Everton stand in the order of things. Against their fiercest rivals they played with spirit and focus and a solid strategy, and created plenty of chances. Liverpool, for their part, rested their key players, underperformed all over the pitch and treated the game like little more than a perfunctory training session. And still won 5-2. At full-time Klopp took to the pitch to join his players in saluting all four corners of the ground, milking the applause. They wanted to soak up every moment. Everton just wanted to get out of there.

Liverpool want to win the Premier League. Everton just want to survive. We can pick apart the coups and blunders that have brought these two clubs to these two points, but in the measured applause of the Anfield crowd lay perhaps the gravest insult. For all the sporadic outbreaks of song, it was hard to escape the sense that to Liverpool Everton are just another team now. There may still be a history there, a shared bloodline, a culture and a tradition. But it has arguably never felt like less of a rivalry.

 

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8 hours ago, viRdjil said:

TK ratings brought to you by viRdjil:
Adrian - 7

Trent - 6

Lovren - 5

Van Dijk - 8

Robertson - 7

Gini - 8

Milner -7

Lallana - 6

Shaqiri - 8

Mane - 9

Origi - 8

 

Subs:

Hendo - 7

Firmino - 7

Gomez - 6

Fucking amateur....6 for Trent??! That 40 yard pass alone was an 11.

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8 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

Both sides were dirty. If anything first half we managed to be dirtier than them. Trent was lucky to stay on the pitch. 


it was an interesting game from a refereeing point of view. Almost like they’d decided to referee it leniently deliberately. 
 

I though VVD got the ball originally on the tackle in the box. When I saw the replay I was sure it would be given a penalty- even if it was one of those that could go either way. I was fairly shocked it wasn’t given. 
 

Trent’s tackle didn’t look good. In another game that could have been deemed a red. 
 

Some of Everton’s tackles / fouls also seemed to be let run. On one hand I thought that the refereeing was good for the game but it’s a glaring inconsistency with other games. 

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Well that was great fun. 
 

I only landed back in the country on Tuesday morning, and had a dead busy day yesterday back at work, so by the time I got home from the match at 1am I was a fucking zombie so I’m looking forward to reading this thread tonight.

 

loved Robbo and Trent giving them some. 
loved big div being a monster against these.

loved Mane being just a relentless, incredible bastard.

loved singing some of the funny songs, especially “he’s only got little arms”

just fucking awesome.

 

my missus came along too, as the lad who sits in the seat next to mine is working overseas so I brought her the ticket as an early Christmas present. 
 

Fucking get in. Glad the games out fo the way now too.

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9 hours ago, Special K said:

There really aren't 3 other teams worse than Everton you know.....

I think you might actually be right. They’ve got the worst defence I’ve seen at Anfield in a long long time, so slow and unintelligent. 
 

and they haven’t got a striker worth talking about either.

 

oh, and their midfield is shite.

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6 minutes ago, Bob Spunkmouse said:

I think you might actually be right. They’ve got the worst defence I’ve seen at Anfield in a long long time, so slow and unintelligent. 
 

and they haven’t got a striker worth talking about either.

 

oh, and their midfield is shite.

And their goalkeeper is a T-rex.

 

What is actually good about them? Digne and Siggurdsson take very good free kicks.. That's about it, really.

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9 hours ago, moof said:

Seriously, people thought VVD on Lewin was a pen? Not in a million years. Even Atkinson wasn’t having any of it 

I was genuinely worried about him checking on if it was a pen. I was convinced he'd give it to them all the Everton players kicked off big time over the challenge. 

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At least two pennos for the fouls on VVD at consecutive corners. Mane's last break through on goal, he was fouled about twenty trillion times. Stayed on his feet; nothing given. 

 

I was ready to kick off on the ref but as the game progressed, he seemed to improve. Of course 50/50s were always going to go their way ("70/30s" said Margaret sitting next to me) but I ended up thinking it was the least offensive reffing I've seen from him. 

 

Lovren looks like a deer in the headlights in possession. "Who shall I pass to? Ahhhhh Virge, good. Nobody will be expecting that. Next time I'll pass to some one else. Oh, I have the ball again. Who shall I pass to? Ahhhhh Virge, good. Nobody will be expecting that. Oh here it is again. Who shall I pass to? Ahhhhh Virge, good. Nobody will be expecting that. Right, this is bad. I'll try someone else or I'll look like I only pass to Virge. Eeyyah Trent, have this; the closest opponent to you is at least two metres away. Oh, you've passed it straight back to me as you were being closed down. Who next then. Ahhhhh Virge, good. Nobody will be expecting that."

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2 hours ago, Bob Spunkmouse said:

Well that was great fun. 
 

I only landed back in the country on Tuesday morning, and had a dead busy day yesterday back at work, so by the time I got home from the match at 1am I was a fucking zombie so I’m looking forward to reading this thread tonight.

 

loved Robbo and Trent giving them some. 
loved big div being a monster against these.

loved Mane being just a relentless, incredible bastard.

loved singing some of the funny songs, especially “he’s only got little arms”

just fucking awesome.

 

my missus came along too, as the lad who sits in the seat next to mine is working overseas so I brought her the ticket as an early Christmas present. 
 

Fucking get in. Glad the games out fo the way now too.

Brilliant, out of rep.

I normally start work at 8am, Thursdays it's 1pm - I'm lapping this all up this morning!

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