Mo Salah at the double leaves the "Toffees" feeling blue
Liverpool 2 Everton 0, 21st October 2023.
LIVERPOOL 2 (Salah 75 and 90+7)
EVERTON 0
I made my rather grand sounding debut this week on the Youtube channel “Red All Over Youtube” and a channel devoted to Liverpool’s last and indeed longest standing fanzine “Red All Over The Land”. I am an occasional and honoured contributor to this independently run fanzine now in its 28th year, having collected them religiously from the very beginning, so it was all rather surreal to be a featured guest this week. Aside from an internet delay whereby I may as well have been standing on the far side of the moon (I’d probably have got a better reception had I ventured into outer space) I enjoyed my brief flirtation with internet fame as well as diving headlong into the topics for the show, namely a kind promotion of my self-published book on Liverpool Football Club “Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles” book link (Go on! Treat yourself!) we collectively put the footballing world to rights on early kick-offs, the dreaded dystopian spectre that is VAR as well as our thoughts and musings on the weekend’s “Derby” with our neighbours in blue from across Stanley Park, Everton.
I’m agnostic on the theme of early kick-offs as it’s the footballing world we live in with the game having sold itself to the television pipers offering oodles of cash to dance to their tunes. It’s the “American Model” of staggered games one after the other for the convenience of a worldwide television audience and with scant regard (if any at all) for actual match going fans. Where I’m not so nonplussed is on the death knell to Pele’s “Beautiful Game” that is VAR, the stagnation and killing of an instantaneous and alive game, and the fact that, well, let’s be honest, Everton aren’t very good, dreadful with a capital D in fact, have been for 4 or 5 years, and will yet again secure their Premier League status only by dint of there being three worse teams than them that tumble from the relegation zone and into the Championship at season’s end.
All three of our major topics for Tuesday’s conversation from the far side of the moon coalesced rather neatly yesterday, with the Mighty Reds of Liverpool grabbing all three Premier League points from a dreadful game against a dreadful team in yet another horrible anti-football spectacle not befitting the majesty and magnitude of this local derby, and VAR poked its nose into controversial footballing matters too.
First things last. Yesterday’s game was a stinker. In a first half at a very quiet Anfield in the day’s first game from television’s “Graveyard Shift”, the only note of any merit scribbled into my trusty notebook was of the ridiculous decision from ex Manchester United defender Ashley Young to crudely “chop down” Luis Díaz on the edge of the Everton penalty area, and so soon after being yellow carded. Yellow soon turned to Red, and the Blues of Everton were down to ten men with over 50 minutes of a dull game still to run. Both goalkeepers barely had a reason to dirty their respective gloves in a first half that became a second half of “backs to the wall” defending from an already unambitious Everton and it took the interference and intervention from VAR to finally split the teams, and for an Egyptian King to score a brace of goals to send the Reds, albeit briefly, to the top of the Premier League once more.
As I watched yesterday’s game from my vantage point on the furthest reaches of the darkest of all sides of the moon, the only consistent “feed” of the game came from South Africa, and on a day whereby their cricket team handed England a painful cricketing lesson in India before inflicting a horribly unfair defeat on their rugby team in Paris, and in the Semi-Finals of the World Cup. All of these matters were for an immediate future but my footballing present was in the beautiful company of ex Red left defensive back from a bygone age, and a particular favourite player of mine from yesteryear, Jim Beglin. The genial Irishman from Waterford with the lilting and beautiful accent so perfect for co-commentary duties had me reaching for my trusty notebook, a compliment of sorts, as well as a damning indictment for the actual game of football itself! Jim determined that the first half was reflective of “Incision versus Industry” before opining during a dreadful start to the second half that the game continued to be “unremarkable” and, rather more tellingly, the game was “crying out for someone to stamp their mark on the game”. That someone wasn’t goal scoring hero Mo Salah but rather his youthful mates from the substitutes bench, Harvey Elliott and Darwin Núñez.
During Tuesday’s rather pleasant if internet delayed conversation on all things football, I cried out for Núñez to be in the starting XI as he simply creates chaos magic wherever he roams. He would draw the game’s first meaningful save from Jordan Pickford in the Everton goal on 65 minutes (yes, 65 minutes!) and just 4 minutes after coming on as substitute. The energy and verve of the team ratcheted up on his arrival and the same can be said, in spades, for fellow substitute Harvey Elliott. The 20 year old had no fear for “Derby Day” on Merseyside as he demanded the ball as soon as he entered the field of play, matching the energy of Núñez and stealing my “Man of the Match” award with a 30 minute cameo of simply wanting the ball, chasing and harrying for possession when not in custody of it, and with 4 or 5 outstanding pieces of skilful ball retention and the spreading the play, he brought both the industry and the incision so perfectly highlighted by Jim Beglin.
Mo Salah bagged a couple of carefree goals (though I wish the little master looked rather more happy with life and seems eerily reminiscent of Sadio Mané in his final season with the Reds) and Ryan Gravenberch was outstanding before his tactical second half substitution and ultimate replacement by a game controlling cameo from Harvey Elliott. A trouble free afternoon saw Alisson Becker rack up yet another goalkeeping “clean sheet”. Dominik Szoboszlai continues to make a mockery of his tender years with another assured display whilst his partner in midfield Alexis Mac Allister had another underwhelming day in the Red shirt of Liverpool and, as his biggest fan, you’ll still be unable to fully appreciate how painful it is to pen that last sentence.
But the Reds are on another unbeaten run without playing all that well and for a short spell, were top of the Premier League once more. They finished the footballing weekend in 3rd place, just a single point behind last season’s thoroughbred pacesetters Manchester City and Arsenal.
This article has been brought to you from the dark side of the moon and by a man setting the controls for the heart of the sun.
A final word from The Boss
“A difficult game. Even before the first whistle, I didn’t know 100 per cent how we would be ready for that. When we had the finishing in the warm-up Dom told me, ‘I actually never played a derby before.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Salzburg don’t have a derby, Leipzig don’t have a derby, Hungary has maybe a derby but the countries who would be a derby, we never played since I played international football.’ ‘OK, good, no problem, you give always 100 per cent so you are ready for the game”.
“But what was really important today was that we didn’t get frustrated in the second half with the fact that we didn’t score already. And I thought we did that really well, I saw that we were ready just to play to the final whistle, try it, and then we scored the first goal. The penalty, really well done by Lucho crossing the ball in that moment; a one-v-two situation I think and then still can cross the ball. And then late, 2–0, game finished”.
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Take it easy out there everyone.
Most of what I know about British football comes from Monty Python ("I hit the ball the first time and there it was in the back of the net!"), but you're a way more reliable source.