Darwin Nunez may have been a long way off after being substituted, but he still managed to get involved in the incident at the end of the Merseyside derby on Monday night.
Liverpool picked up their first Premier League win of 2023 thanks to a dominant performance over Everton at Anfield. Goals from Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo ensured a fairly comfortable 2-0 victory over Sean Dyche’s side.
It was a much-needed win for Jurgen Klopp and his players and obviously meant even more due to the identity of the opponents. The passions of the game came bubbling up to the surface in the closing stages of the match following a flash point between Andy Robertson and Jordan Pickford in the 85th minute.
Robertson angered the Everton goalkeeper by kicking the ball away after the whistle had gone, prompting a little shoulder barge from Pickford. Everton were not best pleased by Robertson’s reaction – to burst out laughing – and after Seamus Coleman intervened things became a bit more heated.
Virgil van Dijk happened to be warming up on the touchline nearby and he started pushing off the onrushing Everton players, with Idrissa Gueye, Alex Iwobi and Amadou Onana among them. By this point, Roberton had been dragged away by his team-mates to continue his shouting match with Pickford elsewhere, but Nunez didn’t want to miss the opportunity to gloat.
The Liverpool striker, who was wearing a puffer coat having been substituted 15 minutes earlier, came charging down the touchline with Kostas Tsimikas to get involved in the melee. After being ushered away by Gueye, Nunez could be seen opening and closing his hand to show the 2-0 score line to the Everton midfielder.
His actions did not provoke much of a reaction, but Tsimikas had to be dragged away from the scene after the stewards got involved to calm things down. Ultimately the fracas came to nothing, with Robertson and Pickford the only players shown yellow cards by referee Simon Hooper.
The win had been a long time coming for Liverpool, whose last Premier League win came against Leicester on December 30, with three defeats and a draw following.
Salah opened the scoring with a simple finish on the counter-attack after some poor positioning from Pickford – and he was delighted with the result.
“It's big, it's huge for us,” he told Sky Sports. “I think we had a perfect week to train and the players were so excited. We couldn't wait for the game to turn everything around. Hopefully that's the start.”
Salah added some praise for the leadership of Jordan Henderson and James Milner. He said: “Hendo and Millie were speaking last week and they spoke again yesterday, 'Guys, we just have to play our football.
"We need to enjoy it because we've been together five, six years, have new players that play really good, so there's no point to play as we started.' I think we managed to play good.”
