Everton dent Liverpool’s title hopes in crazy last Merseyside derby at Goodison

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Wild scenes at FT 

©TM/IMAGO

Although Arsenal and Manchester City fans may have all but resigned themselves to missing out on this season’s Premier League title race, there is still a lot of football left to be played and a few twists or turns may present themselves in the coming weeks and months ahead. One such bump arrived for league leaders Liverpool in a frenetic last ever Merseyside Derby at Goodison Park.

Arne Slot’s side look destined to extend their lead at the top of the English Premier League to nine points but Arsenal gained a lifeline as James Tarkowski netted a dramatic late equaliser in the eight-minute of injury time to salvage a 2-2 draw. Tempers spilled over at full-time with Curtis Jones and Abdoulaye Doucouré both sent off with Liverpool boss Slot also shown red by Michael Oliver as the Anfield side’s poor record at Goodison continued. 

Indeed, when we flick through the history books of the Premier League we can quickly see how often Liverpool have stumbled in the league when they’ve made the short trip to Goodison Park. Such has been the club’s poor record at the venue that the Anfield club have not only failed to win at Everton’s home ground since December 2021 but when we take a look at their record in the last 16 fixtures we can see that Liverpool have actually won just four since November 2009. As we can see, the vast majority of results have ended in rather bland draws, with Everton winning just two of the fixtures themselves. David Moyes revived Everton’s fortunes with three consecutive wins ahead of facing Liverpool and the veteran boss will be delighted at taking a point for the sake of their own season, while conveniently putting a dent in Liverpool’s lead at the top of the table. 

Interestingly, when we then compare Liverpool’s record in away games against Everton to all other clubs in the Premier League we can see just how much the Merseyside derby has caused problems for the Anfield club over the years. When we track results from the formation of the Premier League (i.e the start of the 1992/93 season) we can see that only five clubs routinely take more points from Liverpool in away games than Everton. On average, the Reds win around 1.68 points per game in their trips to Goodison Park. As we can see, four of the five clubs that cause more issues for Liverpool are four of the traditional “Big Six” clubs, while Tottenham’s home ground sits just below Everton in seventh place. Nottingham Forest, who have only hosted Liverpool 16 times in the Premier League era, have quickly rose to fifth having lost just four matches in front of their own fans against the Anfield club.