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The list is quite long. Roberto Martínez, Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva. Recent Everton managers who never won a game against Liverpool. Carlo Ancelotti remains in it, but perhaps not for long.
Controversy aside for a moment, this had the feeling of a milestone for Everton and their last manager. It was, in many ways, a setback.
To be sure, Ancelotti was too busy with his own career to pay much attention to the nuances of the Merseyside derby, but his decline has been a great sadness in the modern era of the Premier League.
For a decade, maybe longer, Everton have stopped playing Liverpool as equals. They play them like losers, like it’s a goblet accessory.
It does not mean that they do not compete. Liverpool have not won at Goodison Park since December 2016. However, it is an inferior form of competition, built largely on the absence of ambition and the desire to frustrate and nullify a superior opponent.
Even at home, Everton played Liverpool as if hoping to score a draw and take them back to their place. And on Saturday that changed.
Everton were also lucky. That is indisputable. Jordan Pickford should have been kicked out in the first 10 minutes, Virgil van Dijk was kicked out of the game, and maybe the season, and there are telescopes at NASA that couldn’t pinpoint why Sadio Mane was offside so he should have. . been the last Liverpool winner.
However, there were periods when it was Everton on the front foot, when Everton’s urgent passing triangles caught the eye, when Everton demonstrated the ambition of a team at the top of the table.
Ancelotti has given them that. The change in narrative, the recalibration of objectives. He’s not going to play Liverpool like he’s in awe of them. He will not try to keep them at a distance.
Ancelotti has faced Liverpool 15 times as a manager. He has played with them more times than with Torino. And in those 15 games, he won seven. They have beaten Liverpool more times than Juventus or AC Milan. Why, then, should he be afraid of that sassy red shirt?
Ancelotti appeared before the cameras, post-match, coldness personified. Jurgen Klopp had already left before he began to chew on the furniture.
Clearly, as the beneficiary of much of the controversy, Ancelotti was in a very different place. Still, there was measure in his voice; the measure of a man who had been training at an elite level his entire career, and was unwilling to settle for less than what he had just seen.
“We have improved,” he stated simply. “We compete well, we compete correctly. This does not mean that we are on the same level as them. We are not. It’s hard. But it could be a target for us.
Like an old Merseyside derby. It is time to think that we can win. It’s too long, too long, for Everton to not win a derby. ” On October 17, 2010, as the red half of the city likes to remind the locals, against a Liverpool team with Roy Hodgson as manager and Paul Konchesky as winger.
Brendan Rodgers never lost to Everton, and neither did Klopp, but this was much closer to a derby from the days of Howard Kendall and Kenny Dalglish. The blood and thunder element has always remained, but Everton’s technical level is increasing, as is his sense of himself.
Now they are led by Ancelotti, not fireman Sam. They look up to possibilities, not anxiously back into emptiness.
And clearly, it would have been very different if Michael Oliver, the referee, had fired Pickford for a horrendous tackle on Van Dijk, who left the field in the 11th minute. In fact, it’s inexplicable that it didn’t when you consider the tiny margins that the VAR feels empowered to address these days.
Later in the game, the same technology would nullify a Jordan Henderson goal for an offside that, according to Klopp, could not be identified by any observers he had spoken to, including neutrals in the media.
It was certainly unnerving to look at home. Surely there is still a catch somewhere that explains the decision. However, it will not be a clear or obvious call.
Pickford’s challenge to Van Dijk, however, came as a sledgehammer with all the corresponding subtlety and mystery. So how is there no one in front of a video screen who can put the slide rule aside for a second and remind Oliver not to forget the obvious?
Pickford had to go. In any other area of the field he would have gone, and it does not matter that there was an offside and the ball was dead. Reece James was sent off after England’s final whistle; West Bromwich manager Slaven Bilic was sent off during the break. The suspension of the game does not give anyone a free throw.
Pickford was guilty of a violent tackle and the consequence was a serious injury to Van Dijk.
That Oliver didn’t even consider the incident worthy of a yellow card, and was later not alerted to his carelessness, shows how lost in the woods VAR has become. It shouldn’t just be Liverpool asking for a review. It will be Everton another day.
Coming back to the game, it wasn’t just Ancelotti who noticed the dynamic shift in Merseyside. Liverpool winger Andrew Robertson also offered a positive update, albeit an element doomed with feeble praise.
“Goodison is never an easy place to get to, but Everton has improved a lot,” he said. “They have made good signings and obviously they have a fantastic coach. They’ll be up there this season, certainly in the top half when it wasn’t the last two seasons. ‘
One imagines, Ancelotti’s goal is slightly higher than 10th, or a slight improvement over last season’s 12th, particularly as the streak that has brought them to the top of the league includes matches against two of the famous Big Six.
“The level we have reached is a good level, but the problem of the season is the consistency that the team must have,” added Ancelotti.
You are right, of course. We have yet to see what happens when Everton does not have one of their key figures, as he will be with Richarlison now suspended for a very poor challenge on Liverpool’s most elegant player, Thiago.
However, Ancelotti is getting into his best form thanks to Michael Keane and Dominic Calvert-Lewin, while Allan and James Rodriguez have vastly improved disparate elements in midfield.
We can argue about fortune and justice, but they will always be present when you win or lose matches. The blue team belief was new at Goodison.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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