Three Points, No Illusions
Everton 1-2 Liverpool | Merseyside Derby, Premier League
This was the derby many expected. Messy, physical, scrappy. Everton brought the fight, Liverpool brought just enough. Not control, not fluency, just enough.
It was a hard watch again. Liverpool still look like a side trapped in their own idea of control. Play our way or not at all. Too rigid. Too slow to adapt. But this game demanded grit, not patterns, and for once, they found it.
Credit where it’s due. They stood up to it. They didn’t fold. They stayed in the fight and took their moment late on. That has been missing too often this season.
Mohamed Salah delivered again. Of course he did. Virgil van Dijk with the decisive blow. The travelling support gave Salah and Robertson their due, a proper send-off for two legends in what was their final derby. That part felt right.
Beyond that, questions remain. Big ones. Liverpool couldn’t even fill the bench. No youth options, no depth, no clarity. A squad stretched and a plan that still looks confused at best.
The table says progress. Seven points clear of the chasing pack. Champions League now within reach. That’s really all that matters now.
But let’s not dress this up. Fifth place is not success, not for this club. This hasn’t been a season of standards. The talk of transition doesn’t hold water when the basics have fallen short, no matter how much Arne Slot, along with some pundits and journalists, tries to peddle it.
Take the win. Take the gap. Move on to Palace next week.
Finish the job. Get into the top five. Then tear this season apart in the inevitable review and make sure nothing like this darkens our eyes again.
It's easy to look at this result and accept all is well when you are celebrating a last minute winning goal against your nearest and dearest rivals. As written above be under no illusion that Liverpool did enough to win (just) in a typical local derby scappy affair of a game but the reality is with little or no control over this game as with many other contests this season. The end of the season is being masked by scappy dogged performances laced with occasional resilience and quality but overall this performance and season has been no where near the standards expected by this football club. I still believe there are big decisions to be made at the end of the season so let see what happens.
It might have been nice if Gakpo had bothered playing that well during much of the season.