“Story of our season – do well against the best teams but struggle against the mediocre ones.”
It was a classic piece of gallows humour for relegation-threatened Evertonians when trying to explain their latest Merseyside derby defeat to their Kopite friends, family and colleagues. Sean Dyche oversaw a deserved 1-0 victory over Premier League leaders Arsenal in his first game in charge – the Blues’ first win since October 22 and the Gunners’ first defeat in the competition since September 4 – prompting a much-improved mood ahead of the trip across Stanley Park.
Many fans of Liverpool – whose side hadn’t picked up three points since the turn of the calendar year themselves – spent the build-up to the fixture ‘crying it in’ about how Everton hadn’t had a better chance to win in front of fans at Anfield for years (the 2-0 success behind closed doors due to coronavirus restrictions in 2021 still feels like an anomaly for those on both sides of the divide). Given the numerous trials and tribulations their own club have put them through of late – both on and off the pitch – and the many sleepless nights such living nightmares have caused loyal but long-suffering Evertonians, listening to the complaints of their neighbours about the 'hardships' of a season potentially stuck in mid-table is more likely to elicit the playing of the world’s tiniest violin than any sympathy.
Liverpool are a football club who haven’t finished lower than eighth in the top flight for the past 60 years. During that time they have won 14 League Championships, eight FA Cups, nine League Cups, six European Cups, three UEFA Cups, four UEFA Super Cups and a FIFA Club World Cup while every other team has been relegated at least once apart from Arsenal and Everton.
The Blues, currently enduring their longest trophy drought, which numerous history conscious Reds will tell you stretches back to 1995, of course don’t need to be reminded of their own relegation battles during this time that have included two final day escapes against Wimbledon in 1994 and Coventry City in 1998 plus the dramatic 3-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace last season to secure their Premier League status in their final home game. After defeating the Eagles, the ECHO’s front page proclaimed: “We love you Everton – just don’t put us through this again!” and added: “Toffees secure Premier League survival on one of the most memorable nights in Goodison’s long history… but it shouldn’t have come to this.”
Yet despite this most stark of warnings in a season in which Everton posted the joint lowest equivalent points total in the club’s 134-year Football League and Premier League history and owner Farhad Moshiri apologising to fans in an open letter, admitting: “It has not been good enough and we need to do better”, the Blues found themselves with a paltry 15 points at the halfway stage of this campaign, their lowest ever tally, and as the only team battling to stay up who didn’t strengthen their squad in the January transfer window, remain in the drop zone now as they fight to avoid what would be their first relegation in 72 years.
But after months of misery and the increasing realisation that Frank Lampard was unable to revive their flagging fortunes, both the result and just as importantly, the performance against Arsenal, gave Evertonians hope that their under-achieving patchwork quilt of a squad assembled by various managers with wildly differing football philosophies just might be able to put up a decent fight less than a mile away from Goodison Park against the neighbours. Unfortunately for the Blues, any such optimists should perhaps have known better.
While Everton quite reasonably could and should have done better against a misfiring Liverpool short on confidence, normal service was ultimately resumed with the Merseyside derby ‘mental block’ that has afflicted many Blues sides for years. Everton have somehow conspired to devise a variety of painful methods to lose to Liverpool whether it’s through freak mistakes, late goals or inexplicable refereeing displays but this ended up being the most routine of victories for the hosts as the lacklustre Blues didn’t so much as lay a glove on the Reds in what in truth was an insipid surrender.
It was not what you would expect from a Dyche team and petty, pantomime scuffle in front of the away fans five minutes from the end when the game was already lost was too little, too late. Although we’ve all got our opinions on whether this Everton side should be doing better, their current position suggests they’re far from a vintage outfit, but despite the old adage about form supposedly going out of the window in derbies, it doesn’t seem to matter how either team have been playing, when they face Liverpool they seldom perform to capacity.
Given Liverpool’s dominance both in terms of general performance and the Merseyside derby in particular, younger observers might be forgiven for viewing this local rivalry as something akin to FC Barcelona’s relationship with Espanyol but it must be remembered that Everton – the senior club in the city of course – is a proud team of many firsts who have been among the game’s elite from the start (they are the only founder members of both the Football League in 1888 and Premier League in 1992 to also be ever-presents in the latter, for now at least). As well as spending a record 120 seasons in the top flight of English football – some 11 more than nearest rivals Aston Villa – the Blues weren’t actually overtaken by the Reds in terms of Merseyside derby victories for the first 87 years of the fixture until a 3-1 defeat at Anfield on November 7, 1981.
It seems utterly bizarre to hear Reds talking earnestly – even former players as old as Alan Hansen – claiming how they “hate” Merseyside derbies. Is the prospect of a single defeat once every decade or two really too much for them to bear?
From an Everton point of view, this has become one of the most-disgustingly one-sided head-to-heads on the fixture list. Other than the aforementioned success in the ‘covid’ era’ when no Blues fans were present to enjoy it, Everton haven’t beaten Liverpool for over four-and-a-half thousand days since the 2-0 win at Goodison Park on October 17, 2010 and that’s when their opponents had Roy Hodgson in charge and were in the relegation zone themselves.
Everton defeated Liverpool seven times in the 1980s; seven times in the 1990s; three times in the 2000s but as stated previously, just once in the 2010s and once in the 2020s to date. Even taking into account that their neighbours often had a stronger team during this time, that record since the turn of the millennium is nowhere near good enough.
Dyche, his players and beleaguered Blues in general can at least take a crumb of comfort that this long-standing issue has afflicted the club in both good times and bad and does not necessarily have to impact much on what is in truth a far more pivotal fixture at home to Leeds United on Saturday. Evertonians have grown used to the string of barbs from the Kop chorus that such the annual trail of tears across the park has brought, but they’ll be mightily relieved just to be able to make that trek again next season after being told by their hosts that this would be “their last trip to Anfield”.
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