Liverpool’s latest attack of stage fright means Manchester City can regain the Premier League leadership with a win at Everton on Wednesday. Jürgen Klopp’s team would have a game in hand, but if City can prove unflappable at Goodison in a way their rival were unable to manage against Leicester and West Ham the sense of a pendulum swinging would surely add to the nervous tension surrounding Anfield.
What Liverpool need most, apart from the break FA Cup weekend will provide to rest some weary legs and bring a few key players back from injury, is a favour from their neighbours in blue. Everton beating City, or even drawing against them as they did at the Etihad last season, would offer Liverpool some breathing space at the top of the table. Were City to show fallibility at Goodison, Liverpool would feel a lot better about a two- or three-point lead with a game in hand.
Naturally it is debatable how many Evertonians would be thrilled by events turning out that way. Liverpool’s 29-year wait for a title is a sequence that almost no one at Goodison is anxious to see ended, though in reality there are going to be very few dilemmas or crises of conscience on Merseyside over Wednesday’s result. Everton are playing so badly that beating Manchester City appears a ludicrous prospect at present, especially if Pep Guardiola’s team turn up looking lean and purposeful and hungry for the points.
Everton have just been embarrassed at home by Wolves, recently of the Championship. Embarrassed because Nuno Espírito Santo’s side deservedly sit in seventh place as a result, the best-of-the-rest position that Everton have almost come to regard as their own, even if the club’s owner has designs on moving higher up the table.
To that end Marco Silva was hired and backed in the transfer market at the start of the season, yet the manager not only finds himself looking up the table at Wolves but also at Watford, his previous club. Wolves and Watford have for the most part been smooth and worth watching this season, with Nuno and Javi Gracia providing the sort of impressive uplift Everton imagined they would be getting under Silva.
It has not quite worked out that way. The early-season glow of promise has faded from imports such as Richarlison, André Gomes and Lucas Digne. Jordan Pickford has been the only bright spot in a defence that has looked alarmingly ill-equipped to deal with even the most basic set pieces, Gylfi Sigurdsson has disappointed and after two transfer windows under this manager and three in all since the departure of Romelu Lukaku, Everton have still not managed to secure a reliable goalscorer.
Silva has not so far proved capable of settling on a system that suits the players at his disposal, so each week Everton look like relative strangers to each other and often appear slow off the mark. It has been mentioned on numerous occasions that Silva’s impact at Hull and Watford was short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful, and with the manager now struggling for answers both on the pitch and in his public utterances, it is being unkindly suggested that Everton placed far too much faith in a relative novice. Say what you like about Sam Allardyce, and Everton supporters frequently did, but he had been around the block a few times and was rarely stuck for something to say, however irrelevant or insupportable.
This is not to argue that anyone is pining for an Allardyce return, just that the appointment of someone at the opposite end of the managerial spectrum appears to have led Everton up a cul-de-sac. The results and league position are unsatisfactory; the owner, Farhad Moshiri, said so some months back and there has been little evidence of a turnaround since. Patience with Silva is becoming limited and, to return to the title race, if City scouts have been watching Everton in recent weeks they will have not have seen much to cause Guardiola any concern.
Football is full of surprises, and it is possible the same scouts made the same sort of reports about Newcastle last month, only for City to end up ambushed on Tyneside by a team much lower down the table than Everton, yet there is a difference. Rafael Benítez not only enjoyed doing his old club a good turn (just as Manuel Pellegrini did when holding Liverpool to a draw this week), he has long been an acknowledged expert in setting up a defence. Benítez teams are often hard to score against – witness the 83 minutes it took Spurs to find a way through at Wembley on Saturday. Silva, whether he fancies making himself popular with Liverpool supporters or not, does not have that sort of discipline on which to draw.
City are the division’s top scorers – should they win at Goodison they will go back to the top of the table on goal difference – while in the 14 matches played since the start of December, including cup games against lower-league opponents, Everton have conceded 25 goals and managed clean sheets only against Bournemouth and Huddersfield.
So, all things considered, neither the blue nor the red halves of Merseyside will be holding their breath when City arrive at Goodison.
If Silva can conjure a good result it could be the one that saves him, but Everton outplaying City would be unexpected, to say the least. The only glimmer of hope for both Merseyside clubs to cling to is that City have already been beaten four times in the league this season, and no one was expecting that either. Liverpool have still lost only once, which ought to give them confidence, though they have now drawn more games than City and Spurs put together.
Everton also play Liverpool early next month, which theoretically gives the Blues another chance to have a say in the title argument, though the way things are shaping up the top two sides in the table will be more worried about their games against Manchester United in the coming weeks. If Everton are once again left on the outside looking in, at least they ought to be used to it by now.
