Toffees lifted by Pick-me-up
IN terms of footballing quality, this derby was about as memorable as the Sam Allardyce Goodison era highlights package.
Yet Everton won’t mind that and will take the point. They know their passing wasn’t sharp enough. They know their tactics for the first hour were straight out of their former manager’s playbook, right down to launching the ball to Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
But they know too their spirit wasn’t lacking and the evidence of that will have repaired their relationship with a fan base that had become disillusioned over the past few months.
This was redemption for the Toffees and it comes in many forms. They don’t always need to play like world-beaters in front of this crowd – just so long as the fans can see a similar level of heart and commitment.
No one typified that more than Jordan Pickford. The derby at Anfield in December was perhaps the lowest moment in his career so far, a stellar rise to the top culminating in a World Cup semi-final, halted by a cruelly comic moment that will live with him forever.
Yet this game will too, for different reasons. It seems bizarre to call anything in this stilted contest memorable, but Pickford’s first-half save from Mo Salah, when he thrust out a right hand to turn the striker’s shot away, deserves that accolade.
Afterwards, the focus was on Salah and his culpability in that miss, and it is true that perhaps last season the ball would have nestled in the far corner.
But not enough has been made of the save – perhaps because it was at close range, perhaps because it was Salah. Yet it was a brilliant stop, a gamedefining one, that had the home fans screaming with belief and pride.
The noise that swept around Goodison told you how important it was for both sides.
For Everton in the moment, for the bragging rights in the offices on Merseyside that Jurgen Klopp spoke about – especially if it denies Liverpool the title – but for Pickford most of all.
There were questions asked about him after the Anfield derby, and they have lingered with the fans, some bizarrely suggesting he had become too ‘big time’ and got carried away with his England success.
He is nothing of the sort of course, a down to earth character who works as hard as any keeper who has played the game.
Yet nothing answers those questions better than evidence on the pitch. And in that moment Pickford had his
redemption.