On Wednesday everning Everton face the old enemy at Goodison Park in a Merseyside derby that might be the most important in years, or even decades.
Why do I say this? It’s not because the result itself will be uniquely important. In one way it’s just another game of football and Everton are once more finding new ways to lose them. They’ll be nothing new in a heavy defeat on Wednesday.
But, obviously it is a derby and the Toffees’ haven’t won at Goodison Park since beating the Reds at the Grand Old Lady in October 2010.
The last game between these two old rivals was the 2-0 win at Anfield last season, which ended an even longer run without a Toffees’ victory there. That seems far longer than less than a year ago.
And, now of course Everton are on a terrible run without a win or a goal since beating Norwich City on the ……
There is a palpable sense of crisis about the club these. And, although we’ve had dreadful runs and defeats before, even last season when the Blues’ lost so many matches at home, undermining their campaign and costing them any hope of European football, there is something even more corosive about this situation.
Things feel different. Farhad Moshiri has lost the coach he most wanted, Carlo Ancelotti, appointed a new manager in Rafa Benitez who was a deeply controversial choice while failing to give him any money to improve a disjointed and under-perfoming squad.
It was a massive gamble that had to pay off and needed every bit of luck for it to do so. However, as usual the football Gods have deserted the Toffees’ and after a simply unbelievable number of injuries which deprived him of the spine of the team and all his best players at one point or another, the early promise has disintegrated.
So, after the demoralising defeat at Brentford on Sunday comes the one fixture that no Evertonian wants when the team is going through such purgatory.
And, of course, the Toffees’ manager struggling to get a tune out of this frustrating side is still regarded as a legend at Liverpool for the success he engineered there.
The initial willingness of some Blues’ fans (including me) to overlook his chequred past and give him the benefit of the doubt, has now decreased rapidly as results continue to get worse and his management becomes more erratic and almost stubbornly ineffective.
With little prospect of being able to improve the squad for the foreseeable future and huge problems from top to bottom in the club, it’s a bleak background to be preparing for a derby.
As to the game itself well what can be said? Everton are basically in relegation form and still might be without key players they desperately need back.
They face a Reds team in superb form having scored eight goals without reply in their last two Premier League matches and no doubt itching to rub salt into Evertonians’ wounds.
One point that seems worth mentioning is how quickly and easily so many of the so-called esperts and pundits in the game become strangely forgetful.
Remember last season when Liverpool struggled to defend their title and the usual suspects were rolled out to explain how hard done by they were with so many injuries and such unfair misfortune! Imagine if they had to cope with the Toffees’ problems?
And, of course there’s been no mention recently of the disgraceful fiasco of the so-called Super League, which Liverpool were prime movers of and that could have permantly damaged football in this country. Selective memory syndrome perhaps.
As we all expected nothing was done to punish these clubs apart from cursory fines. The Premier League should have deducted at least ten points minimum and UEFA should have banned these clubs from Europe for a few years too.
Well, I wouldn’t want to go on to much about this in case I get labelled a ‘bitter Blue’ by that lot, I couldn’t bare that!
I’m not going to even attempt to make a prediction. I just hope that somehow these players can recognise how much responsibility they have to at the very least show some pride in that shirt and give everything they have to get a result on Wednesday.
If they don’t and Everton get a beating I wouldn’t want to bet on what the reaction might be at Goodison Park when the final whistle blows.