A strong line-up for David Moyes, Yobo not fit, Yakubu back but on the bench, absolutely gorgeous midday sunshine.
Good early pressure and a couple of corners from Baines that came to nothing. But very scrappy stuff with lots of strong, even dirty physical contact as both teams got stuck in from the first minute, all blood and thunder. Atkinson allowed most of it to go unpunished, eventually having a strong word for a nasty ankle tap on Fellaini.
Kuyt went in the book on 20 minsfor catching Donovan outside the area and Baines forced Reina to tip it over but Donovan's corner failed to clear the first defender. Fellaini then followed in on Kuyt after Pienaar had tackled him and was lucky not to get punished. Pienaar got booked for going in with his foot high, Carragher then got yellow for an atrocious tackle from behind on Pienaar... fearsome stuff.
Everton lost their defensive shape and had to thank Osman for a late challenge that put Ngog off. The stupid fouls continued, Fellaini and Kyriakos both diiving in on each other, Kyriakos getting a red for the two-footed challenge... and Fellaini stretchered off after stamping on his ankle...utter madness! Fellaini needed an icepack on his shin, and it looked like Arteta would come on, as both sides carried on with 10 men, albeit somewhat less aggressively.
Fellaini could not stand on his ankle and Arteta finally came on at 40 mins, Everton with a man advantage... but for how long? Calls then started going against Everton in various ways it appeared Atkinson was perhaps trying to redress the balance. A dangerous poor free kick was given for a Gerrard dive on a light block from Cahill just before added time, Gerrard clipping the bar with his delivery.
Four minutes of added time in which Everton were able to string together a spell of possession, spoilt when Donovan gave the ball away, but Everton engineered a fantastic chance, Cahill launching a fantastic header on the end of a clever move that flew over the bar... but he was ruled just offside.
After the break, a sweeping move got Cahill in, his control was good, but his shot was weak. Everton clearly had the man advantage in attack but overplayed it, no-one prepared to take a shot, until Donovan tried form distance and it was poor.
Atkinson was conned by a clever Ngog dive but Gerrard fired the free-kick straight at Howard. Everton need to be very careful...Atkinson not calling a foul on Donovan, allowing Ngog, Distin blocking his shot a corner, and it was Liverpool's turn to apply some pressure. And from the corner, Howard was hopelsss, just patting at Kuyt, who headed home with ease, despite being a man down.
Everton were rattled, and Heitinga got called for a yellow as Ngog dived again. Howard saved the free kick with ease. But a fantastic run in by Donovan, beats three players and crosses to the back post. Arteta now on corner duty but still not getting them onto a blue head. Despite being a man down, Liverpool seemed to have 12 men in defence at times, such was he inability of Everton to generate anything approaching a decent chance on goal as the pendulum swung back to the home side..
Ngog was replaced by Babbel on 63 mins as Everton labored to build another attack that went nowhere. More possession but zero penetration as Liverpool blocked every avenue, and then attacked with brio when given possession.
Everton finally got a call when Maxi clipped Donovan but Arteta's delivery was pathetic, a rare opportunity wasted. Everton's game had been begging for a change desperately and seemed an age before Yakubu and Anichebe finally came on for Saha and Osman with barely 20 mins left. Arteta got an elbow in the face but it was unintentional, the madness having passed out of the game as Liverpool sat comfortably on their lead.
Yakubu and Anichebe went for the same long ball in attack, not a good sign, as the clock ticked away. Midfield seemed to struggle for Everton, completely unable to do anything constructive with the ball, each so-called attack crumbling with a misplaced pass or easy block that sent them back to square one. Yakubu was very rusty and his touch simply not up to the dogged attentions of the Liverpool defenders.
Everton finally won a reare corner with a bit more inventiveness but Reina punched it away and the ball just would not fall for the Blues. Pienaarwent down and the Gerrrd diving in on him for a bit of afters, when it all blew up, the Everton players reacting strongly, Anichebe pushing and shoving. Yellow for Gerrard and Anichebe.
Back to the job of trying to score a goal, with now just 5 mins left, but still a complete inability of Everton to penetrate. No guile, no nouse, no cunning, no inventiveness.... simply no match for a determined and solid Liverpool defence. With 2 mins left, Yakuba finally got a shot, finally forcing the save from Reina but they could do nothing from the corner.
Reina fell badly as 5 mins were added, Everton finally shaping up, Anichebe losing Insua, but not doing enough to beat Reina. Aurelio on dfor Rodrigexz in added time to waste another minute or so as the Blues came resigned to the fact that they weren't going to score if the game continued all afternoon. Pienaar finally got a second yellow for a soft barge on Gerrard, where the :Liverpool captain collapsed in a heap, earning Pienaar a second yellow and a red, just to rub salt in a very sore and festering 10-year wound.
Once again, Everton came up short when in possession, the man advantage utterly meaningless. Moyes, 600 matches as a manger... surley he's not still learning, but his really lacked the inspiration needed to win this one. Utterly gutting.
Michael Kenrick
They came pumped up on the back of a nine-match unbeaten run that stretched all the way back to a cruel defeat in the Goodison derby in December but Everton came away from Anfield counting the cost of another failure to win on Liverpool soil in 10 seasons. The loss of three points, not altogether unexpected given the Blues' record on the wrong side of Stanley Park, was one thing but in the bigger picture of a crucial month, it's the loss of personnel that may prove to be the more damaging blow.
Marouane Fellaini, the linchpin in the recent revival of Everton's fortunes, was forced out of the action on stretcher following an X-rated challenge with Kyrgiakos that saw the Greek sent off and Steven Pienaar, who on another day with a more hard-line referee might have been red carded himself for catching Javier Mascherano with his studs, picked up a one-game ban with a second yellow for going in late on Steven Gerrard.
While there will no doubt be accusations thrown all over the place in the post-match reckoning, few players emerged with much credit from what was an especially ugly Merseyside derby. Referee Martin Atkinson, a far cry from the drill-sergeant assertiveness of a Howard Webb, was mostly to blame for not clamping down on some nasty challenges in the early going: Jamie Carragher's barely-disguised assault on Pienaar in the first minute shook the South African so badly that he barely seemed to recover; Tim Cahill retaliated on Lucas six minutes later; and Mascherano somehow escaped a nailed-on yellow card for clearly catching Fellaini late.
Fellaini himself appeared to boot the ball in the face of the prostrate Dirk Kuyt but it wasn't until Pienaar's clash with Mascherano and Carragher's act of retaliation in scything him down on the half hour that the first bookings were handed out.
In between, there was precious little football being played. Everton had the greater share of possession in the first ten minutes but appeared all too happy to just pump the ball foward hoping to play the percentages. Tim Cahill was putting in plenty of effort but apart from a speculative effort from 20 yards that bounced well wide, there wasn't much end product. His partnership with the leaden-footed Louis Saha, if that's what it could be called, was non-existent for the most part, and with everything being so narrow, chances were at a premium.
At least in the first half, there was one player in Blue who at least seemed prepared to rise above the pitched battle that was going on around him and that was derby debutant, Landon Donovan, and when his smart run after 20 minutes took him to the edge of the "D", he sold the referee beautifully by artfully going down under Kuyt's minimal contact and presented Leighton Baines with a chance from a direct free kick. The fullback cleared the wall but his impressive shot was palmed over the bar by Reina.
At the other end, the home side were being contained for the most part but Daniel Agger had a chance from a corner that he volleyed narrowly over and David Ngog lashed a shot wide under the attentions of Leon Osman.
On the evidence of the first half hour, the chances that Atkinson would be employing his red card looked high and when Kyrgiakos and Fellaini came together in a 50-50 clash of studs, ankles and shins, the occasion for the first dismissal arrived. The defender's boots were both clearly off the ground but when Fellaini planted his own studs on Kyrgiakos' shin and his ankle visibly buckled, both players ended up writhing in agony and the crowd no doubt expected it would be red cards all round.
Presumably feeling that Fellaini was taking defensive measures against Kyrgiakos, it was the Greek who was sent off while the Belgian spent seven minutes on the touchline having his ankle strapped before he was forced to concede that he would be playing no further part in the game.
Somewhat predictably, the referee spent the rest of the first half and a good percentage of the second compensating for having reduced Liverpool to ten men and the Red hordes began profiting from a number of questionable decisions, not least the award to Steven Gerrard of a free kick on the edge of the box when the midfielder had clearly dived past Cahill's challenge. Thankfully, the Liverpool captain's free kick bounced off the top of the crossbar and Cahill was presented with the chance for revenge in stoppage time but he put his diving header inches over the bar.
From the carnage of the first half the players emerged from the half-time interval with visibly calmer heads and Everton began to show signs that they would now take advantage of the extra man by controlling the pattern of play. That they did for periods of the second half but there was a frustrating lack of any kind of penetration. Pienaar was largely anonymous — in any case, he was fouled almost every time he touched the ball but rarely awarded a free kick — and while Baines and Donovan were making the odd forays down the flanks, the Blues just weren't playing with enough width.
And though Sylvain Distin was looking occasionally shaky, the Blues were relatively comfortable, with Liverpool only really threatening at set-pieces, situations where they were causing more problems than were Everton at the other end. And so it was that the decisive moment in a game that would probably otherwise have ended 0-0 arrived 10 minutes after half time.
Tim Howard allowed himself to be too distracted with keeping Kuyt away from him that he lost concentration on an inswinging corner that the Dutchman duly nodded home with the American 'keeper flapping embarrassingly at thin air. It was an incredibly soft goal and it pumped the home side with all the fire they needed to see out the rest of the game.
That Everton made it so easy for them was maddening. Though Mikel Arteta, who'd come on place of Fellaini, was enjoying the freedom of the middle of Anfield, stringing sideways passes across midfield, he wasn't able to make an awful lot happen. The Reds were pulling men behind the ball and with little width and embarrassingly few ideas, the Blues' attacks consistently foundered on their defence. Worse, their set-piece deliveries consistently let them down.
Again it was Donovan who showed the occasional spark of life and after an hour he skipped to byline having brilliantly rounded Insua but his chip to he back post was headed behind at the back post and the resulting corner came to nothing.
As is so often the case, time ticked on towards 70 minutes and the Blues looking nowhere near to scoring, activity from the bench was conspicuous by its absence but Moyes finally made some attacking changes with 18 minutes left when Yakubu and Victor Anichebe came on for the disappointing Saha and the ineffective Osman.
Tempers flared again late on when Pienaar was again flattened in a challenge without any action by the referee and Gerrard blatantly followed through on his prone body with both legs. That prompted a furious reaction from the nearest Everton players and Anichebe got into a shoving match with Agger as players descended in anger on the dispicable midfielder. Anichebe and Gerrard were booked and the Liverpool man survived to see Pienaar pick up a second yellow for barging into him after the ball had gone, reducing both teams to ten men and depriving the Blues of Pienaar for one match.
Liverpool by this point had laid down the challenge for the Blues to break them down in the final quarter of an hour but nothing they tried — from hoofed balls from the back by Heitinga and Distin, to faltering moves down the right where Neville was offering little threat, to occasional attempts to walk the ball through the red wall — worked.
Indeed, it took a moment of magic from Yakubu, who did more in 20 minutes than Saha had done for 70, to force Reina into his only real save of the second half with one minute left on the clock. Out of nowhere, the Nigerian whipped a snapshot toward the top corner that the 'keeper palmed away for another fruitless corner.
David Moyes made much in the build-up to what was a keenly anticipated derby of his belief that his Everton side are top-four quality and, having, more than matched Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City in recent weeks, there was conviction among Evertonians that we could finally put the Anfield hoodoo to rest.
Sadly, despite the having the advantage of an extra man for almost an hour, the Blues came up well, well short of their manager's estimations, once again casting doubt on both their ability and that of their manager to consistently challenge the top four. The ineptitude with which they tried to break down what was a very ordinary Liverpool team — the goal aside, Howard probably oly had one save to make all game — will have many worried about the remainder of this month with tough games to come this, perhaps all of them without Fellaini.
You could again point to the weak links in the side — Distin was uncertain, Osman unproductive, Saha seemingly disterested, Neville merely a body at right back — but, ultimately, they mistook fight for naked aggression in the first half and descended to Liverpool's level, emerging with very little credit from either a disciplinary or footballing point of view.
Derby bragging rights again go the horrible shite but the Blues might be counting the cost of this defeat in more ways than just three dropped points, certainly in terms of personnel but perhaps also in terms of morale. The visit of Chelsea in midweek offers an opportunity to quickly address any knock to confidence but the manager's talk of top-four quality may remain a little misplaced, at least until his strongest team is available.
Player Ratings: Howard 6, Neville 6, Heitinga 7*, Distin 6, Baines 6, Fellaini 6, Osman 6, Pienaar 6, Donovan 7, Cahill 6, Saha 6 Subs: Anichebe 6, Arteta 6, Yakubu 7
Lyndon Lloyd
Everton begin what has been dubbed the "month of death" this weekend with arguably the biggest fixture of the lot, a Merseyside derby clash with Liverpool at Anfield. In the space of 22 days, the Blues will face three of the so-called "Sky Four", the current pretenders to that group, Tottenham, and face two legs against Sporting Lisbon in the Europa League. To say that February could define our season is no exaggeration.
Having come in for so much criticism for the way David Moyes's teams have approached games against this calibre of opposition in the past, it was refreshing to see the Blues take the game to Chelsea and earn a well-deserved point at Stamford Bridge, play Arsenal off their own ground and come within a hair's breadth of beating them, and despatch Manchester City with consummate ease.
The challenge now is to carry that new-found belief into a massive sequence of matches and send a clear signal of intent that Everton remain dark horses for another top-five finish.
Much is being made of how this Saturday's derby might provide Everton with the best opportunity in years to claim victory at Anfield for the first time since September 1999. The Reds' main attacking threat, Fernando Torres, is ruled out through injury, they're in turmoil at Boardroom level, and Rafael Benitez has come under heavy fire for recent results, not least the FA Cup defeat to Reading.
By contrast, Everton have righted their own ship and are in the midsts of a nine-game unbeaten run that stretches back to the Goodison derby which they dominated but still, inexpicably, ended up losing 2-0.
But as any seasoned derby observer knows, recent form counts for nothing and it'll all come down to how the Blues perform on the day.
In terms of team selection for Everton, not much is likely to have changed, Sylvain Distin may be in contention for a starting berth again after missing last weekend's win at Wigan with a muscle strain and his manager will have to decide which of he or Philippe Senderos is the better choice for the blood and thunder that's likely to ensue this weekend.
It's quite possible that with no fresh injury concerns, Moyes could name an unchanged line-up which would mean Diniyar Bilyaletdinov starting on the bench where he could be joined by Yakubu after he returned from the Africa Cup of Nations. Indeed, it could be a crowded bench from the attacking perpective, with James Vaughan and Victor Anichebe also jostling for places.
Mikel Arteta also missed the trip to the DW Stadium with a groin strain and it's highly unlikely he'll start such a potentially physical encounter but he too could figure on the bench.
This will be Moyes's 600th match in charge of Everton as a manager, and though he's overseen a dramatic transformation in the Blues' fortunes since taking over a relegation-haunted team eight years ago, he's only managed to beat Liverpool three times. No one will want to mark this milestone fixture with victory more than he and he'll feel content that in the likes of Marouane Fellaini, Steven Pienaar, Louis Saha, Tim Cahill and derby debutant, Landon Donovan, he has the talent to do it.
Fellaini himself appeared to boot the ball in the face of the prostrate Dirk Kuyt and Carragher blatantly retaliated for Pienaar's clash with Mascherano by scything him down on the half hour and he too was rightly booked.
And though Sylvain Distin was looking occasionally shaky, the Blues were relatively comfortable, with Liverpool only really threatening at set-pieces, situations where they were causing more problems than were Everton at the other end. And so it was that the decisive moment in a game that probably would have ended 0-0 arrived 10 minutes after half time.
Tim Howard allowed himself to be too distrated by keeping Kuyt away from him that he lost concentration on an inswinging corner that the Dutchman duly nodded home with the American 'keeper flapping embarrassingly at thin air. It was an incredibly soft goal and it pumped the home side with all the fire they needed to see out the rest of the game.
Sadly, despite the having the advantage of an extra man for almost an hour, the Blues came up well, well short of their manager's estimations, once again casting doubt on both their ability and that of their manager to consistently challenge the top four. The ineptitude with which they tried to break down what was a very ordinary Liverpool team will have many worried about the remainder of this month with tough games to come this, perhaps all of them without Fellaini.
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