I TOLD MYSELF,YOU CAN’T MISS IT!

Rooney scores the goal he craved as a little boy Blue

DON’T miss. Not here. Not now. amid the chaos that broke out in the anfield Road penalty area, wayne Rooney puffed out his cheeks and tried to settle his nerves.

The adrenaline surging around his body made it feel like his heart was jumping out of his chest, but he needed to hold it together. This was an opportunity for which he had waited a lifetime and he was in no mood to let Everton’s first penalty at anfield in 29 years to slide.

Rooney has experienced countless big moments during his career but this one was different, more intense and personal. The little boy who grew up a Blue had his chance, at long last, to score against Liverpool in Merseyside and it was not one he intended to pass up.

‘Dejan Lovren kicked the ball away, so I walked over to get it,’ said Rooney as he reflected on the 77th-minute flashpoint.

‘I was just trying to compose myself. all I kept thinking was, “You can’t miss this penalty… you just can’t!” It was such a big moment in the game. I was delighted with it.’

He was more than delighted. smiling and laughing, he described his penalty — which was smashed past simon Mignolet with every ounce of power he could muster — as one of the most special goals in his career, one that secured Everton a point that, Rooney insisted, was absolutely deserved.

‘we stuck to our game plan,’ said Rooney. ‘we were organised and we did it well. we nicked the draw in the end. we deserved the point. It is easy to go away from a game plan when you are 1-0 down, but we knew at 1-0 there was always a chance.

‘we stuck to it and thankfully we got the penalty, the goal and we saw it out to get the draw.’

There was, inevitably, a fair amount of fury on the Red side of the city. Liverpool, after all, had been the ones who had done all the pressing for most of the game, had gilt- edged chances to extend the 42nd-minute lead Mohamed salah had given them and were rarely troubled.

But everything changed in the 77th minute when Lovren pushed Dominic Calvert-Lewin in the area. It looked a penalty in real time and television replays confirmed referee Craig Pawson’s decision to be correct, yet the arguments raged long into the night.

Lovren stopped to discuss the incident briefly in anfield’s interview area, but stormed off when it was said to him that Pawson had made the right call.

For all the anger swirling in the Liverpool ranks, they should have been more angry with themselves for carelessly letting two points slither away.

‘Look, don’t put your hands on a forward when he is in the box,’ said Everton manager sam allardyce. ‘Don’t mess with him, don’t push him, don’t touch him. If you do, you run the risk of giving a penalty away. He (Lovren) had no need to do it. He could have stood up.

‘He could have shepherded him away from goal, which was where he was going. He didn’t, he put his hands on him and he pushed him over.

‘People can call it soft and whatever but you don’t do those sort of things in the box. The credit goes to Craig Pawson for being brave enough to give it.’ Here is an idea of how big the moment was in terms of the contest and in terms of history: the last Everton penalty at anfield was converted by wayne Clarke in December 1988. Before that, they had not been awarded a spot-kick here since 1937.

when Jurgen Klopp reviews the DVD, however, he will appreciate that Liverpool allowed Everton back into the contest.

He also insisted the fault should be apportioned to him for the line-up he selected that did not contain either of his Brazilians: Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino.

‘I said to the boys before (the match), we can change as much as we want when we win games,’ said Klopp.

‘when we don’t win, I take the blame. I have no problem with that. The boys who came in were fresh and worked hard.

‘My players, if they work hard and that’s not enough, they need to be brilliant in all moments. and what will we say about Everton players is they worked hard but nobody there was brilliant. It’s a derby and a fight. we accepted it, it’s a fight. we could have won 1-0 but didn’t.’

and they didn’t because Rooney held his nerve. To see where Everton are now, two weeks after they were demolished 4-1 by southampton, shows how quickly things have turned.

Rooney said: ‘we were thinking, “Is (David Unsworth) going to get the job? are they going to appoint someone else?” That ran through the whole football club.

‘It was probably on the players’ agenda, even when you think it isn’t. Thankfully it was sorted out and we know where we are now.’