Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Lampard’s men in spot of bother
EVERTON manager Frank Lampard believes his side were denied a clear penalty which could have had a decisive impact on their 2-0 Merseyside derby defeat.
With the game still goalless early in the second half Anthony Gordon, booked in the first half for diving in the area, went down under a clumsy looking challenge by defender Joel Matip.
Neither referee Stuart Atwell nor VAR were interested.
Gordon left the stadium complaining to a member of the backroom staff about why the incident had not been referred for review and later Tweeted a video clip of the incident accompanied by two face-palm emojis.
Lampard felt the officials made an error.
He said: “It is a penalty in the second half. I don’t think you get them here. I think if it is Mo Salah at the other end, you get a penalty. I have played in teams in the top half of the league, you get them.”
Defeat left Everton two points from safety, having dropped into the bottom three before kick-off after Burnley’s win over Wolves, with Chelsea to come to Goodison Park at the weekend.
“It (the Burnley result) doesn’t change it. I expected them to get a result today. We can’t get caught up in a game of what everyone else is doing,” Lampard added.
Everton lost defender Ben Godfrey to injury in the warm-up, but Lampard is hoping it will not turn out to be serious.
“It was bad luck, a muscle injury. Michael Keane comes in against Liverpool’s attack with 20 minutes to go and it was a compliment to him and how he handled it.”
The win maintained Liverpool’s pressure on Manchester City, who lead the Premier League by a point. Manager Jurgen Klopp’s substitutions – and a change to a more attacking system – helped turn the result in their favour as within a couple of minutes of sending on Luis Diaz and Divock Origi the latter had a hand in the build-up to Andy Robertson’s opener.
Origi then scored a closerange header himself with five minutes to go, further enhancing his Merseyside derby legacy with his sixth goal in nine matches against Everton.
Klopp said: “In football if you don’t take risks you cannot win a football game. It was obviously easy to improve from the first half and we did, that’s why it was all good.”