Ashley Williams’s 86th-minute winner against Arsenal on Tuesday was his first goal for Everton and the surge of blue pride it provoked could not have been better timed. It would be overstating the case to suggest Ronald Koeman and his players can now go into Monday’s Merseyside derby brim full of confidence, especially with Phil Jagielka suspended as a result of the last-minute mayhem in the Arsenal match, but at least the cloud of gloom that was beginning to surround Goodison has been lifted.
Before the Arsenal victory Koeman had been worrying aloud that his players were not strong enough to stand up to Watford, never mind Liverpool. It was a fair point. Everton’s encouraging start to the season had been squandered through defeats at Dean Court, Turf Moor, St Mary’s and Vicarage Road, not to mention the boos that were heard at home to Swansea before a late Séamus Coleman equaliser prevented the relegation strugglers escaping with an unlikely three points.
Arsenal were looking to go top of the table when they arrived to face a side with one win in 10 Premier League matches and they started well and finished strongly. It was only the bit in the middle, when Everton remembered their manager’s words and stood up for themselves, that sparked the crowd’s appreciation and produced the sort of atmosphere that Arsène Wenger acknowledged had influenced the result.
Williams said: “I think we answered the manager’s questions with that performance, but now we have to build on it. We’ve got an even bigger match coming along next and we have to do the same again. We showed what we can do against Arsenal but we have to make sure it is not just for one game.”
This will be Williams’s first Merseyside derby and the same is true of his manager, so both are likely to have been looking up the recent history of the fixture. The record does not make particularly pleasant reading from an Everton point of view. The solidity of the David Moyes years yielded three derby wins in the league, all at Goodison.
The last of them was in October 2010, when Tim Cahill and Mikel Arteta scored the goals. Liverpool were labouring near the bottom of the table at the time, with Fernando Torres misfiring and supporters – Liverpool supporters, that is – growing unhappy with Roy Hodgson as manager. Joe Cole and Paul Konchesky appeared for Liverpool at Goodison in the first game watched by John W Henry in his capacity as the club’s new owner.
The red path since has not always been smooth but it has been generally upward. Liverpool have topped the table on occasions and been involved in a title fight while Everton have continued to flirt with the lesser European positions. Seven of the 11 games since Everton’s last win have ended in draws, though of the four defeats a couple were by 4-0, both on Roberto Martínez’s watch.
The last one, at Anfield in April, probably convinced anyone who still needed convincing that Martínez had to go. A 1-1 draw at Goodison earlier in the season had similarly proved Brendan Rodgers’s last match in charge at Liverpool, though the manager’s fate had most likely already been decided.
Martínez went into what would be his final derby with huge questions over his ability to organise a defence and ended up covered in embarrassment. Everton turned up at Anfield with no recognised defenders on the bench, then lost Ramiro Funes Mori to a red card followed by John Stones to illness. “Everton are all over the place, they look like kids in the playground,” the former Blue Kevin Kilbane said in his radio commentary. Even Jürgen Klopp, making his debut in the Merseyside event, could tell something was amiss. “There was no real fight,” he said. “I am sure derbies in the future will have more intensity than that.”
Everton certainly hope so and, after coming up with a potent mix of aggression, determination and desire to see off Arsenal, a benchmark has been set for the minimum Goodison expects. Jagielka will be missed for the home side, partly because his absence paves the way for the erratic Funes Mori to reclaim a place in the starting lineup, unless Koeman opts for the 20-year-old Mason Holgate.
Jagielka not only offers invaluable experience and a cool head in these frequently heated situations, the Everton captain supplied a memorable equaliser two years ago at Anfield, though he has been showing signs of slowing up of late in giving away a series of penalties and free-kicks.
While Everton must do without Yannick Bolasie for the rest of the season, Liverpool are still recovering from the loss of Philippe Coutinho until the new year. Yet based on the evidence of their handsome win at Middlesbrough on Wednesday they are not going to miss him all that much. Adam Lallana is bang in form at the moment and bound to cause the Everton defence a few problems and Divock Origi is proving himself a capable understudy whenever called upon.
The Belgian scored to interrupt the Lallana show on Teesside and should he and Funes Mori meet again at Goodison there might be repercussions from the incident at Anfield in April. Not only did the defender see red for a bad foul on Origi, he walked off the pitch patting his badge after sidelining the Liverpool player for almost a month.
Then again there might not. This is the friendly derby, after all. It just also happens to be the encounter regularly attracting the most red cards. Or, as the Mail on Sunday’s reporter put it a few years ago: “The most ill-disciplined and explosive fixture in the Premier League.”
These days one only hears the “friendly derby” billing uttered with an accompanying snort of derision, a bit like what happens with “the beautiful game”. Neither expression is particularly apt most of the time, though the potential is theoretically there. While the Merseyside derby is rarely beautiful, it can be more friendly than it looks. Outsiders, not that these occasions are ever about outsiders, just have to take that on trust.
