It looks routine enough. Liverpool beat Everton 2-0 at Anfield for the third season in succession, registering their 14th win in the past 24 Premier League home derbies and 99th in the fixture’s history, while Mohamed Salah made another decisive contribution to take Jürgen Klopp’s team briefly top of the table.
It was anything but routine. It was gruelling, testing and controversial, with another weak refereeing display exerting an unhealthy influence over a showpiece event. This time Klopp had no complaints.
Salah scored twice to shatter the resistance of a team reduced to 10 men by Ashley Young’s foolish dismissal in the 37th minute. The first arrived from a penalty awarded after VAR, not exactly Liverpool’s friend of late, sent Craig Pawson to review a clear handball he had missed by Michael Keane.
Pawson, hesitant and inconsistent throughout, caused genuine consternation in the Everton ranks when failing to show a second yellow card to Ibrahima Konaté with the game goalless. “Ridiculous,” “baffling” and “impossible” were just some of the words Sean Dyche used to describe the decision. The Everton manager was well within his rights.
His Liverpool counterpart has been there too recently and could only sympathise. The standard of refereeing in the Premier League continues to alarm.
Liverpool dominated the 243rd Merseyside derby and took full advantage of their reprieve. But they had rarely extended Jordan Pickford and anxiety was creeping into their play when VAR bailed out Pawson over the penalty. Luis Díaz tormented the right side of Everton’s defence all afternoon.
Young received two bookings for fouls on the Colombia international - the first soft, the second stupid – while it was a Díaz cross that struck Keane’s outstretched arm. Salah’s two goals took him above Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard on the all-time Anfield goalscorers’ list.
Young’s dismissal was the 29th in the history of the Merseyside derby. Everton have 20 of them. Their only genuine complaint in this instance was that Kostas Tsimikas, deputising for long-term absentee Andy Robertson, committed an identical foul to Young’s first booking and no card was shown for his foul on Jack Harrison.
Their sense of grievance deepened when Konaté escaped a second yellow card for a foul on substitute Beto. James Tarkowski had been booked earlier for a similar trip on Ryan Gravenberch. Klopp essentially acknowledged the let-off for Liverpool when replacing Konaté with Joël Matip at the next available opportunity.
Everton were encamped on the back foot with 11 men, although could have taken the lead after 36 seconds when Dominic Calvert-Lewin soared above Virgil van Dijk to meet Dwight McNeil’s delivery. The centre-forward headed straight at Alisson, and the Liverpool keeper was barely troubled again.
Liverpool’s final ball was sloppy, perhaps unsurprisingly after the international break, but their difficulties were not entirely of their own making. They faced an obstinate Everton defence that produced increasingly heroic individual displays as the 10 men fought to preserve a point. Tarkowski threw himself in the way of a Salah effort after a rare slip by his hugely impressive partner in central defence, Jarrad Branthwaite. The 21-year-old continues to blossom and show why Everton were so keen to tie him down to a new long-term contract recently.
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Everton were holding firm when they were undone by VAR. They survived one VAR review when Díaz went down after cutting back inside Nathan Patterson, introduced along with Keane as Dyche switched to a five-man defence for the second half. Barely a minute later there was another for Keane’s failure to move his arm out of the way of Díaz’s cross. Pawson was sent to the pitchside monitor. Salah sent Pickford the wrong way from the spot when the penalty was inevitably awarded.
Harvey Elliott, part of an effective double substitution with Darwin Núñez, almost doubled Liverpool’s lead with a 25-yard drive that Pickford tipped on to the bar. The second came with Everton exposed as they went in search of an unlikely equaliser in the dying seconds. The tireless Alexis Mac Allister won possession and sent Núñez scurrying away on the counterattack. Núñez found Salah with a perfectly weighted, perfectly timed pass and an unerring finish ensured Liverpool were home safe.
