New venue, same old agony

Depressingly, agonisingly, sickeningly they almost always find a way. Of cutting our legs from beneath us. Of profiting from our mistakes. Of producing decisive moments in derbies even while struggling elsewhere. Of breaking our hearts. An addendum covering Hill Dickinson Stadium has seemingly been added to the pact they made with the Devil some time in the 1960s.

The post mortem will centre around referee, Chris Kavanagh, and a controversial “no penalty” call in the first half, the impact of the twin loss of two key players late on, the painful ineffectiveness of David Moyes’s substitutions, and Everton’s inability to take the initiative and test a third-choice goalkeeper in the final half hour.

The bottom line, though, is that the Blues have lost both derbies this season, not all that surprising given the enormous gulf in resources between the two clubs at the moment and that Arne Slot benefited from £450m in incoming transfers last summer. And while Everton avoided the ignominy of Liverpool having stained Goodison Park’s history with a winning record in Walton, almost as gallingly the first win in an all-Merseyside affair at the new patch went the reds’ way.

Ultimately, it came down to the fine margins that can so often decide a local derby — Everton denied a deserved opener by the offside flag and then undone first by a badly misplaced pass by Dwight McNeil and, at the death, by an all-too-familiar weakness defending set-pieces, something that has been a dismal feature of their first season on the waterfront.

Having dragged themselves back to parity thanks to a goal from the industrious Beto, the stage was set for Moyes’s men to push for a winner late in the second half but the loss to injury of both the Guinea-Bissau international and Branthwaite seemed to suck the wind from Everton’s sails.

Sadly, Moyes’s two substitutes, Thierno Barry and Tyrique George, failed woefully to meet the occasion and the midfield lost its impetus. Liverpool, meanwhile, used all their experience to make the decisive breakthrough from a corner in the 10th minute of stoppage time. And it just had to be Virgil van Dijk, alongside their other goalscorer, Mohamed Salah, one of their most criticised and most glaringly fading forces, who grabbed the winner. Again, sickening…

This was a rare occasion where Everton came into the derby with a realistic chance of beginning a new era of this famous old grudge match at their new stadium with a victory. Where the gap in points between the reds and Blues was a yawning chasm of 30 points at this stage last season, it was just five before kick-off this time around as Liverpool have mounted a weak defence of their Premier League crown. Buoyed by their own recent form, Everton smelt blood.

Feeding off the precedent set by their pulsating 3–0 win over Chelsea in their last home game, Evertonians rose to the occasion with a super-charged atmosphere. Outside, Regent Road had been a sea of blue pyro and blue jerseys as supporters made their way to the ground; inside, Hill Dickinson Stadium was a cauldron of noise, whistles and jeers from the biggest crowd Bramley-Moore Dock has yet seen as the hosts began on the front foot.

After frenetic opening dominated by long balls by both teams, Beto forced an excellent save from Giorgi Mamardashvili when he glanced James Garner’s cross towards the bottom corner and the Georgian palmed it to the side.

Six minutes later, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall chased down a superb ball over the top by James Tarkowski and was sent sprawling to the turf but Kavanagh motioned that it had been a coming together of two players rather than a foul by Curtis Jones who made no attempt to play the ball at all.

Mamardashvili was forced into action again with a quarter of an hour gone when he pushed Garner’s free-kick away but the offside flag was raised (even though no other Everton player had touched the ball) before Beto was played clean through by Branthwaite, only for the striker to horribly miscue a shot that threatened the corner flag more than the visitors’ goal.

As the game reached the midway point in the first half, Everton’s early fire had been extinguished and Liverpool began to establish a solid foothold on proceedings. Jordan Pickford managed to flap away a Salah corner, Tarkowski deflected a Cody Gakpo effort behind and a fourth corner from the reds was repelled.

But then, with 26 minutes gone, Bramley-Moore Dock erupted as Iliman Ndiaye put the ball in the net with a fine finish. The Senegalese had converted Jake O’Brien’s cross to Everton from the right with aplomb but his and the stadium’s celebrations were killed by a VAR review which rightly determined the Irish defender had been offside before collecting Pickford’s raking pass.

Two minutes later, the cruelty of this fixture was underlined. O’Brien passed forward to McNeil in his own half, the winger carelessly passed straight to Gakpo who swiftly dissected the Blues’ defence with a perfect pass for Salah to bury past Pickford and put the reds ahead.

Everton were stunned into relative inaction for the remainder of the first period and it was Liverpool who came closer to adding to the scoreline in the dying minutes before the interval when Pickford tipped Gakpo’s drive over and then made a routine stop to gather Alexander Isak’s tame shot.

What had been a stalemate for nine minutes after the restart came to life when Everton brought themselves level with an equaliser that reignited the spark inside the ground. Dewsbury-Hall was on the end of another long ball down the left and shrugging off the attentions of Ibrahima Konaté, he centred low where Beto stretched out his right boot and guided it home on the slide.

Mamardashvili came out of the collision between the Everton player and Jones and eventually had to be stretchered off the field, to be replaced by Freddie Woodman. Frustratingly, apart from an Iliman Ndiaye strike that the substitute beat away 10 minutes later, the Blues would fail to put him under much pressure for the remainder of the game.

Prior to that, Gakpo had drilled one wide from the edge of the box and Tarkowski had to head away from under his own crossbar from another ball in by the Dutch forward while Andrew Robertson flashed a shot past Pickford’s left-hand post.

What impetus Everton had on the back of their equaliser was lost when Beto departed the fray with 17 minutes left following a clash of heads with Konaté that left him with swelling above his eye.

His replacement, Barry, was utterly ineffectual and though there had been a case for introducing the trickery, pace and directness of George earlier in the second half, the Chelsea loanee was just as disappointing. Apart from Garner ballooning an effort into the stands, Everton offered little in the closing stages to suggest they might steal the points.

And if it was hoped that there would be a renewed push from Moyes’s charges in 11 minutes of stoppage time, their spirit seemed to have been crushed by what appeared to be another serious hamstring injury to Branthwaite that required that he, too, be carried off the pitch on a stretcher.

Seemingly content with a point, Liverpool played spoilers in the final 20 minutes, slowing the game down and winning fouls but after their own sub Rio Ngumoha had smashed inches over the crossbar, they would seize one last chance when Dominik Szoboszlai’s shot was deflected behind.

The resulting corner was swung in and when Tarkowski failed to out-muscle Van Dijk and with Pickford rooted to his line, the Dutch defender planted a header straight down the middle of the goal to win it.

Everton didn’t deserve more pain from this fixture, particularly on the occasion of the first derby at Hill Dickinson Stadium. They had been more than a match for Liverpool on the day but lost their way towards the end of both halves and succumbed to a team whose two £100m-plus summer signings alone cost more than four times the Blues’ starting XI combined.

That context will be scant consolation for Evertonians this evening, however. Liverpool came to the Dock wounded and vulnerable but still emerged with the derby spoils in gut-wrenching but utterly familiar scenes.

It’s up to the Toffees’ ownership to ensure that the rebuilding process begun last summer continues in more effective fashion in the upcoming close season to help close the gap between these two old institutions and ensure that a new era where results like these are far less common can be ushered in.