Following subdued goalless draws against Bayern Munich and Manchester United, Liverpool took out their frustration on Watford in midweek, smashing five past the Hornets without reply. The win kept Jurgen Klopp’s men top of the Premier League, although they will be knocked off the summit by the time they face Everton in tomorrow’s Merseyside derby unless Manchester City lose at Bournemouth today.
Liverpool’s recent record in Mersey derbies is quite impressive, with Everton not getting one over on their fiercest rivals since October 2010. These sequences do come to an end eventually, though, and the pressure on Marco Silva has eased a little since the Toffees’ 3-0 win at Cardiff during the week. Our statistical analysis looks at the form of the two teams, and the recent history of this fixture, ahead of the Goodison Park grudge match.
Last six Premier League games
Everton: W2, D0, L4, F6, A8, Pts 6
Liverpool: W3, D3, L0, F14, A5, Pts 12
After leaking six goals in four Premier League games in January, Liverpool conceded just once in the same amount of league fixtures last month and they come into the derby with clean sheets in their last four matches in all competitions. On the flip side, Wednesday’s 5-0 win over Watford was just their second win in their last six games, having drawn three of their last five in the Premier League. They scored as many in their win against the Hornets as they had managed in their previous five matches combined in all competitions.
Everton’s midweek win in Cardiff came as welcome respite for Silva, whose team had lost four of their previous five in the league. The Toffees’ only other victories in 2019 came against Bournemouth and Huddersfield and they have lost four of their last league games at home, their 2-0 win over the Cherries the exception. Following draws in their two matches after the derby defeat in early December, Everton have not drawn any of their last 12 games, winning four and losing eight.
Premier League head-to-head record
Everton have been stuck on nine Premier League wins over their neighbours for almost eigh-and-a-half-years and have only beaten Liverpool once in this competition since September 2006. However, they have proven capable of taking points off the Reds at Goodison Park, with five of the last six iterations of this fixture ending level. Liverpool’s only win at Everton in that time came courtesy of a stoppage-time Sadio Mane winner in December 2016.
Liverpool will be hoping to extend an unbeaten sequence over the Toffees that currently stands at 16 games, although only seven of those yielded victory for the Reds. If they can claim three points on Sunday, it will be their third league double over Everton since 2011/12, having last managed it two seasons ago.
With 21 red cards in 53 Premier League meetings, this fixture has the most dismissals in the history of the competition, with Everton picking up twice as many as Liverpool. The most recent of those was shown to Ramiro Funes Mori in the Toffees’ 4-0 defeat at Anfield in April 2016. On a happier note for the blue half of the city, they won their first penalty in a Premier League Merseyside derby last season at the 51st time of trying, scored by Wayne Rooney after a clumsy foul by Dejan Lovren in a 1-1 draw at Anfield.
Last Goodison Park meeting
Everton 0-0 Liverpool, 7 April 2018
Merseyside derbies are usually built up as unforgiving, ruthless games which aren’t for the faint of heart. This goalless draw was everything you wouldn’t expect from a game between these two teams. Liverpool’s lack of intensity was somewhat understandable, though, with the match falling between their Champions League quarter-final games against Manchester City. The inclusion of Ragnar Klavan, Danny Ings and Dominic Solanke in the Reds’ starting XI backed the theory that Klopp was prioritising European matters over their domestic duties.
That weakened line-up, and an insipid Liverpool display, presented Everton with the ideal opportunity to finally get one over on their rivals, but Sam Allardyce’s men failed to make the most of it. They would look back ruefully on two late chances, in particular, a Cenk Tosun header which glanced wide and a curled Dominic Calvert-Lewin effort which was just too high.
Everton’s not-so-sweet 16
Everton’s winless sequence in Merseyside derbies is currently 16, an unenviable sequence that began with a 2-2 draw at Anfield in January 2011 in what was Kenny Dalglish’s first game in his second spell as Liverpool manager after the sacking of Roy Hodgson. On that day, the Toffees scored twice in five minutes after half-time to overturn an interval deficit.
The following season was one of the poorest Liverpool have had in the Premier League, finishing a lowly eighth, but they still did the double on Everton, winning 2-0 in a tempestuous game at Goodison Park and triumphing 3-0 at Anfield courtesy of a Steven Gerrard hat-trick.
The bad blood between the clubs came to the surface again in October 2012, when Luis Suarez responded to David Moyes’ suggestions of being a diver by throwing himself to the ground in front of the then-Everton manager after scoring in a 2-2 draw at Goodison Park, although Moyes had the last laugh as the Toffees scored an injury-time equaliser. The return fixture was a forgettable 0-0 draw at the tail end of a season in which the blue half of Merseyside finished higher than the Reds.
The teams drew again in November 2013, but this time it was a goal-fest, with six shared evenly between the teams. Romelu Lukaku thought he had won it for Everton late on, only for an 89th-minute Daniel Sturridge equaliser to deny them. The meeting at Anfield was distinctly more one-sided, Liverpool romping to a 4-0 midweek win in which Sturridge exquisitely chipped Tim Howard from just outside the penalty area and later missed a penalty.
In the absence of any victories over their rivals since 2010, the 1-1 draw at Anfield in September 2014 was the closest Everton have come in terms of one point feeling like three, when a long-range piledriver from Phil Jagielka stunned the Reds in stoppage-time. The return at Goodison Park was a tame scoreless draw.
Everton held Liverpool to a draw at home for the fourth time in five seasons in 2015/16 when a 1-1 in October proved to be Brendan Rodgers’ last game in charge of the Reds. Klopp had a Merseyside derby debut to remember later that season when Liverpool won 4-0 at Anfield. Divock Origi was among the scorers that night; more on the Belgium striker later.
In a fixture that has thrown up plenty of decisive stoppage-time goals, there was another in December 2016 when Mane won it for Liverpool after a Sturridge shot rebounded off the post and the Senegal hitman buried the follow-up. The Reds completed the derby double three months later, triumphing 3-1 at home.
Both derbies last season were drawn, Mohamed Salah’s stunning opener at Anfield cancelled out by Rooney’s penalty before a goalless draw at Goodison Park. The last meeting of the teams three months ago was again settled by a last-gasp winner, Origi following up after an error from Jordan Pickford in the Everton goal.
