Is this Everton's best chance of finally beating Liverpool at Anfield?
Trent Alexander-Arnold was a few days away from his first birthday, Dominic Calvert-Lewin was two and Jurgen Klopp was a second-division defender in Germany.
Admittedly Carlo Ancelotti, who was in charge of Juventus, had already graduated to the top but the footballing world was a different place when Everton last won at Anfield.
When did Everton last win at Anfield?
It was a different millennium, too, September 1999, when Kevin Campbell scored and a teenage Steven Gerrard was one of three players sent off.
Since then, Everton have ventured across Stanley Park 23 times, getting 10 draws, 13 defeats and no wins. In the Premier League, their 20 trips have brought nine points from a possible 60. The closest thing to a victory they can claim is a 1-1 draw in the FA Cup in 2009, when Everton won the replay at Goodison Park.
If the law of averages suggests the wait must end, this could be their best chance to take three points on enemy territory since 1999. Liverpool have gone from a 68-match unbeaten run at Anfield to three consecutive defeats; the first time they have lost three straight home league games since 1963. They have conceded three goals in 10 minutes and then three in seven in their last two Premier League matches whereas, at this stage last season, they had not conceded three times in any top-flight game.
Meanwhile, Everton’s tally of seven away wins is only bettered by two teams and is already the most they have in a season since 2013-14. They are on course for 12 away league wins, which would equal a club record set in 1969-70 and 1984-85, two campaigns when they were champions and the season included 42 games. With 13 points from their last five away games, they have got better on the road of late.
Everton have a manager who famously lost a Champions League final to Liverpool in 2005, but won one at their expense in 2007. Ancelotti has won at Anfield with both Chelsea and Real Madrid. He has beaten Liverpool in each of the last two seasons, albeit with Napoli. He is unbeaten against them in league derbies, drawing two, even if he was defeated in the FA Cup.
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But Ancelotti will have to fly in the face of his employers’ history to win on Saturday. It bodes badly for the Italian that Everton’s record on Liverpool turf has got worse. Liverpool have won their last four home derbies and six of the last seven. Klopp is unbeaten home and away against Everton – as Brendan Rodgers and, in his second spell, Kenny Dalglish also were – and at Anfield, he has six wins from seven. He was denied the clean sweep only by Wayne Rooney’s controversial penalty for Sam Allardyce in 2017. His team have never trailed to Everton; indeed, the blue half of Merseyside was last ahead for seven minutes at Goodison Park in 2013.
The manner of Liverpool’s recent Anfield triumphs has reinforced their superiority and Everton’s accident-prone nature in such matches. In 2018, Divock Origi got a 96th-minute winner after a blunder by Jordan Pickford. In 2019, Klopp benched Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino so Origi and Xherdan Shaqiri came in and scored three first-half goals in a 5-2. It was Marco Silva’s last game before being sacked. Ancelotti’s derby debut was in January 2020’s FA Cup tie where Klopp fielded five teenagers in a weakened team and one of the rookies, Curtis Jones, scored his first senior goal.
In contrast, a decade has elapsed since Everton even led at Anfield. In January 2011, Jermaine Beckford put them 2-1 up. Dirk Kuyt levelled 16 minutes later. They have go to back a further nine years for the previous time they were ahead in the league, courtesy of Tomasz Radzinski in 2002. In total, they have been ahead at Anfield for 36 minutes in 20 visits, though they boasted an advantage for 27 minutes in 2009’s FA Cup draw.
They can at least argue they have shown some resilience. Everton have turned a deficit into a draw three times in the final 15 minutes of games. They have only been thrashed three times - 4-0, 4-0, 5-2 – even if there is also a case for including 2012’s 3-0, though the difference stemmed then from a Gerrard hat-trick more than collective dominance. But those other hammerings all came in the era after David Moyes.
Without winning, Moyes ranks as Everton’s best manager at Anfield in the 21st century. He drew on seven of his 12 visits, taking six of their nine points. Without him, they have just three draws in 11 trips: one each under Walter Smith, Roberto Martinez and Allardyce. All three of Everton’s clean sheets came under Moyes, whose first two Anfield derbies ended 0-0. His 12 games at Anfield produced just 20 goals: in contrast, there have been 28 in nine since.
It is an understatement to say Everton have the minority of them. They have only scored 14 goals at Anfield in the 21st century; they have conceded 13 to Gerrard and Origi alone. Tim Cahill, with three, is the only Everton player with more than one goal at Anfield since their last victory. That Campbell, the last man to score a winner for Everton there, is now 51 shows how long it has been. But a week that has contained Fulham’s first ever win at Goodison Park shows waits can end on Merseyside this season.