The Grand Old Lady deserved this. Through the decades, her famous old bones have rattled and shaken to the thunder of the greatest fans in the world. She has borne witness to triumph and agony, desperation and heroic escape, but as the clock ticked deep into injury time tonight it looked for all the world as though she would play witness to one more painful defeat on her final staging of England’s most passionate local rivalry and, most likely, her last night under the lights.

Everton, depleted but belligerent and defiant, had led the 245th Merseyside derby, only to see Mohamed Salah fleetingly emerge from the far periphery of this match to lay on an assist for Liverpool’s equaliser and, then, seemingly rifle home a 73rd-minute winner that would have extended the Reds’ lead at the top of the table to nine points.

The headlines were being written and the context being fleshed out: of Liverpool’s superior quality and match-winning pedigree; of Everton’s inferiority and injury-ravaged squad (another foot-soldier, arguably the most important, was lost when Iliman Ndiaye had to be helped off the pitch in the first half) following a disappointing and mostly unproductive transfer window, the enduring legacy of Farhad Moshiri’s waste and the handcuffs of PSR; of the stark underlining of that gulf in class inherent in Abdoulaye Doucoure’s glaring misses at 1-1 from chances that might have delivered the Toffees a famous win.

Enter James Tarkowski, villain of piece here just four days ago as the Blues crashed out of the FA Cup to Bournemouth and culpable, to an extent, for Alexis Mac Allister’s 16th-minute leveller this evening, to write another entry into Goodison folklore with a net-ripping, stoppage-time volley that almost blew the roof off this treasured anachronism of a stadium. Chaos. Bedlam. Ecstasy. Unbridled jubilation. Relief. And, perhaps, one last moment of historic importance for a stadium that has seen so many.

It goes without saying that a last-gasp winner would have been all the sweeter and, in truth, had the team Skipper’s 98th-minute thunderbolt sealed all three points, the undisputed title front-runners could have had few justifiable complaints — although complain they still would and complaining they are regardless — because David Moyes’s side created the better chances on the night and did enough to win.

Doucouré wasted two gilt-edged chances to work Allison Becker at the very least and Jack Harrison came close to capping a very good personal performance with a rare goal while Arne Slot’s mob, for all their talent, deep bench and well-oiled machinery, hardly troubled Jordan Pickford all evening.

Everton had to play very well to have any chance in this game and, lifted by the fevered blue-smoke welcome they received outside the ground before kickoff, they did acquit themselves laudably. Beto responded to concerns pre-match that the Blues would be crucially lacking the aerial prowess and hold-up play of the injured Dominic Calvert-Lewin by making himself enough of a nuisance in aerial duals against Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté while putting himself about admirably in the physical battles on the ground.

Then, he calmly slotted home the opener with the effortless composure the exhibited against Leicester 10 days ago as Everton brilliantly caught the visitors out with a quickly-taken free-kick. Jarrad Branthwaite took full advantage of Conor Bradley’s inattentiveness by sliding the set-piece through a yawning gap where Beto’s arced run kept him onside and left him with just Allison to beat with a smooth side-foot finish.

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Fears that the home side had “gone too soon” were realised just five minutes later. Doucouré was robbed trying to gallop towards the halfway line, Ndiaye missed the ball with a sliding attempt to intercept Konaté’s pass to Salah and before Vitalii Mykolenko could get tight to the Egyptian he had floated the ball to the edge of the six-yard box where the diminutive Mac Allister rose highest to guide a header inside the far post with Tarkowski standing a yard off him.

The game then lapsed into a more typical derby phoney war that increasingly became dominated by the inconsistent fussiness of Michael Oliver and his notebook and yellow card. Jesper Lindstrøm and Idrissa Gueye were booked within two minutes of each other after Andy Robertson was carded while Dominic Szoboszlai somehow escaped censure at all over the course of the 90 minutes despite being a serial offender.

Everton, who had lost some of their rhythm and impetus after a long delay for Ndiaye’s injury before he was forced off in tears with an apparent knee injury, wasted their set-piece opportunities but had a chance late in the first half when the substitute Harrison swung in a cross but Beto miscued his header.

Szoboszlai, meanwhile, had the Reds’ only other chance of note of the half when he forced a one-handed save from Pickford and Tarkowski lunged in to prevent Luis Díaz from seizing on the rebound.

On the other side of the interval, Everton regrouped. Harrison drove forward and had a shot blocked within a minute of the restart before Gueye surged to the corner of the box in the 54th minute and clipped a perfect ball for Doucouré but despite having all the time and space he could have asked for, he planted his header well wide of the target.

A minute after that, Beto was onto a loose ball like a shot and he fed Harrison but, having engineered space for a shot, the loanee could only screw his effort across the face of goal and behind. Later in the half, Branthwaite would have the ball in the net but Jake O’Brien was offside in the build-up.

Curtis Jones came on for the yellow-carded Bradley and promptly got booked himself for scything Harrison down but after Tarkowski had served up a great chance for Doucouré and the French-born midfielder spooned an awful shot into the Gwladys Street, the Liverpool sub combined with another of Slot’s second-half introductions, Darwin Nunez, and an unwanted assist from Lady Luck with 17 minutes of 90 to go.

Tarkowski stretched to get a foot to Diaz’s in-swinging delivery, O’Brien was a fraction of a second too slow to react to the loose ball, Jones got a toe on it, Nuñez played it back to him and though Branthwaite got his head to the resulting shot, it ricocheted straight to Salah who controlled adeptly and quickly fired it past Mykolenko and between Pickford and the near post.

Moyes responded within a few minutes by taking Lindstrøm and Gueye off in favour of Charly Alcaraz and Tim Iroegbunam but, in truth, Liverpool’s second goal had knocked the stuffing out of Everton and it would be another 10 minutes before they fashioned another opening, this one spurned by Beto who shot tamely at the keeper.

Salah forced a rare save from Pickford who palmed his sweeping effort over the bar at one end, Iroegbunam ballooned the ball disappointingly over at the other and that appeared to be that. Goodison appeared to be condemned to taste bitter defeat in her 120th and final derby.

The clock was rolling towards 97:00 as Ashley Young, a late change for James Garner, hoisted a cross-field ball towards the opposition penalty area that Doucouré nodded down to Harrison. His attempted cross was blocked but it broke to Mykolenko who hooked it back into the “mixer” where it eluded Beto and Konaté and was knocked to the side by Iroegbunam.

Tarkowski, who had jogged increasingly further forward as the move developed down the left, had arrived level with the penalty spot by this point and time seemed to stand still as the ball dropped invitingly in front of him and then go to warp speed as he crashed an unstoppable volley into the roof of Allison ’s net. As he wheeled away in delight, the overwhelming majority of 40,000 fans erupted at the best strike in a derby since Phil Jagielka's almost unfathomable beauty at Anfield 11 years ago.

It was an explosion of joy quickly tempered by an agonising delay as Video Assistant Referee, Chris Kavanagh, and company pored over replays at Stockley Park, first at a tight offside call on Doucouré from Young’s initial ball and then on what the Reds perceived to have been a push by Beto on Konaté . But, after what seemed like an eternity, the goal was given and the Blue faithful could celebrate in earnest.

Of course, few all-Mersey clashes are complete without a red card or two and referee Oliver got to brandish three after the final whistle as Doucouré’s goading of the away fans was met with fury and a bout of “handbags” with Jones and the cluster of blue and red shirts who joined in, while Slot was sent off for something he said to the official as the pair shook hands in the centre-circle.

These two storied clubs came into the evening deadlocked at 41 wins apiece on this hallowed ground and the tally of draws not far behind. It would have been so painfully cruel and yet perversely apt for a club that has heaped so much misery on Everton through the decades — from the 1984 Milk Cup final, the Heysel ban, the denial of the double in 1986, and a catalogue of referee-assisted derby defeats since the turn of the millennium — to have left an indelible red stain on the history of Goodison Park that could never have been scrubbed. Thankfully, that ignominy was avoided by Tarkowski's heroics.

Again, the only thing more fitting than equalising with the last kick of the game would have been a last-gasp winner but, under the circumstances, denying them the satisfaction of a derby record on our ground and a nine-point lead at the top was a more than acceptable alternative.

Perhaps the fact that Everton’s moment of euphoria was to deny Liverpool a victory was once again instructive of the gulf that has opened up between the two clubs over the Premier League era. The hope from the Blue perspective is that as the last chapters close on Goodison Park and the Toffees transition to Bramley-Moore Dock, it heralds the first step in bridging that chasm.

Lyndon Lloyd