Given the increasingly important role of analytics in football, I thought I’d treat you to some - frankly astonishing - stats from my career.
In the 11 seasons I was at Liverpool, we averaged out at a top four finish every year, with a statistical position of 3.9th place. Everton, on average, finished 14th... meaning that in all my time at Anfield, we were roughly 10 places above them each season. We never once finished below them in my career with the Reds, and in fact, the closest they came to us in all that time was within three places on a couple of occasions. Which means we were a better team than them - by some distance - in all my games against them.
Yet, and this is where the astonishing bit comes in, Liverpool’s record in the time I was at the club in the first-team squad against Everton is: Played 20, won 6, drew 8... lost 6. So we had an equal record against a team who finished 10 places below us - every season for 11 years.
And that shows you what people always mean by saying the formbook goes out of the window in derbies, and especially in the Merseyside derby -which my admittedly long-winded analysis shows you. Except, of course, it doesn’t any more. Everton have won one of the last 25 derbies. And actually, since I left Liverpool (for the second time) in 2007, they’ve won three of 34.
Which leads me to two conclusions. One: the gap between the two clubs has never been bigger; even if in terms of the table, it’s currently only a little bit wider than it was in my time, and in fact over the past decade that gap was closer than in the 90s and 2000s. Two: derbies have changed in football; quite possibly forever. That can be the only explanation for the sea change, which has seen the form book not thrown out of the window, but upheld fairly religiously.
I’ve looked back at the red cards in the fixtures since my time, and I have a confession to make... in the Premier League era it was me who kicked it all off! Well, David Unsworth actually, who wound me up and we were both sent off for fighting, though in truth it wasn’t much of a punch I landed.
That was in 1997, and in the 14 years that followed there were a total of 20 red cards. Yet in the 11 years since Jack Rodwell was dismissed in 2011, there have been TWO. Liverpool have had one player sent off in 16 years. Why have the games gone far more to form, and why are there so few red cards any more? Well, pretty obviously the two are connected.
I think in part, it’s because the games are more tactical and technical. Get a player sent off, and that makes competing if not totally impossible, then virtually. But it goes beyond that. You look at the probable squads today, and chances are, there will be two local lads out of 40 players in the matchday squad. That’s pretty astonishing too, when you think about it.
I’m not saying the players don’t care as much, but I wonder if they are insulated a bit more from the emotion of it. From the meaning of it? Yes and no. But the bottom line is, there has never been a bigger gap in living memory. Well at least in my living memory. And that’s perhaps the most pertinent stat of all going into this derby.
There shouldn’t be. Everton have actually spent far more, net, than Liverpool over the past five years. Everton spent big in the summers of 2016 and 2017 when Liverpool snapped up Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah. While Everton's big signings have flopped, Mane and Salah have flourished, although I don't think that would have been the case had things been the other way around.
Why? Because they have an identity, a culture and a philosophy at Liverpool. And if they’ve got one at Everton, then it’s not evident to me. It’s simple: you can’t have a clear identity (and intelligent recruitment) if you change managers and go in wildly divergent directions every season.
Everton have been a disaster under Farhad Moshiri, and that has to change. They must stick with their choice as manager now, give Frank Lampard time, even if they go down. It’s the only way to make the derby stats astonishing again.
