Everton 2 Liverpool 0: Match Review

Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Everton 2 Liverpool 0 in the 2023-2024 Premier League season at Goodison Park…

LIVERPOOL get what they deserve. And so do Everton.

This is your beginning, middle and end. The better side on the night wins and that’s not so much a punch you have to roll with but a series of blows you have to take.

It’s an atrocious performance. That said, we can be grown up enough to give the Blue Brethren some credit.

I like their manager. Others don’t and that is fair enough but I think he is more than capable of having a plan that his players can execute well. I think he thinks through games well from start to finish and he finds moments for his team to flourish.

Sean Dyche has players. The centre halves are excellent. A partnership to die for. Dwight McNeil is bright as a button; I like him an awful lot. Abdoulaye Doucoure is a good player and has long been so.

Today, Liverpool play into their strengths, into their plans, and that is the most frustrating part. They play the game on Everton’s terms. This is the error, this is the core shortcoming – it is Everton’s game and therefore Everton’s win.

Some places you go to, you have to swallow it being on their terms. But not here, not today, not Goodison Park. Everton are a tidy side, but they aren’t good enough to get on top of Liverpool in quite the way it plays out.

No one plays well. The goalkeeper doesn’t breed confidence. The two centre backs are short of what we need on the day. Alexis Mac Allister has his worst game for Liverpool and, good lord, does that sting. It is Trent Alexander-Arnold’s poorest game since returning from injury, but he can look ahead of him and demand more.

Demanding more from the front is perfectly valid – Darwin Nunez needs a better game than this. Mo Salah is anonymous. Luis Diaz is involved, but there isn’t enough final third from him either.

Yet, there still should be questions about the setup and outlook – it was wholly predictable. That meant they played into Everton’s hands. At no point did the forwards feel close enough together. Liverpool were not compact enough. They lacked bravery from one to 11.

That is why they get what they deserve, why it hurts. This isn’t separate to the manager, but instead he is integral to it. Nobody has let him down and we shouldn’t go near that rhetoric. Liverpool lack gumption and structure in both halves. It is a collective failure we all need to accept and swallow.

Consider it swallowed. I spent an adolescence getting beaten by The Blues. Then that stopped, broadly speaking, and I enjoyed an adulthood winning against Everton far more often than not. Alongside it came Liverpudlian trophies. Then there was Jürgen Klopp who should have won more games at Goodison Park, but who won everything with us.

Consider it swallowed because you get beat from time to time and today isn’t unlucky. The better team won. Instead, I am lucky. You are lucky. We are lucky – because we got Jürgen Klopp. We got what all this means. We got our guy. We got the best fella and the extent to which he is the best fella is he even knows before we do that he could do with getting off.

Consider it swallowed because I always back us to find our way, I will always back you and I. We get what we deserve, sunshine. We get what we deserve, gorgeous.

We get what we deserve. Tonight we got what we deserve. Since 2015 we have got what we deserve. And so have Everton.

Neil

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