Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 2 Everton 1 in the 2025-2026 Premier League at Anfield…
WHAT A SIDE. What a week. What a 45 minutes of torture.
David Moyes’s Tricky Blues showed and showed in the second-half but couldn’t create their second meaningful chance.
That didn’t mean you didn’t imagine it, you couldn’t see it, you didn’t with all your dread find yourself able to taste 2-2.
This is in part due to Liverpool’s recent record. Also just playing The Blues. The brain imagines the worst and the worst is always their joy in our ground.
Now, having breathed in and out, having contemplated the world and the moment, having looked at the league table, we are able to praise a Liverpool side who have shown unbelievable determination and fitness to find their way into three wins in the first difficult week of the season.
And looking back at the game, the great Evertonian chance never comes because Liverpool stand firm. Indeed, the best chances in the second-half are all Liverpool’s and had The Reds countered a little better 3-1 was likelier than 2-2.
There are heroes everywhere you look across this game of two halves. First-half, the fluency, smart running and cool finishing of Ryan Gravenberch is the game’s driving force. It’s a consummate midfield performance, the sort that stories of the legendary Graeme Souness tumble down the years.
Pre-match there was an impeccably honourable period of applause for Bobby Graham and Joey Jones by both sets of supporters and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that like every other moment we have that commemorates death, this is for the living.
To an extent it is to tell today’s players that we won’t forget. That we will honour. And let’s make a pact, you and I, right now – in thirty years tell someone about Ryan Gravenberch today. Tell them how he had had 48 hours recovery and surged and scored against The Blues. Tell them how he fought for his life and ours second-half. They tell of his touch and his courage. Let’s all meet up in the year 2000. Won’t it be strange when we are grey and old.
Dominik Szoboszlai offers all the above but without the goal. He was impeccable throughout. He is the most ‘Champion’. It feels lifting the trophy has lifted him most of all. He is the essence of a midfielder in 2025 and he should sleep tonight. I’d love him to still be asleep when we kick off against Southampton. He’s magnificent.
At left-back Milos Kerkez announces himself for the second successive league game. I’m glad it feels like he has hit his straps and worth remembering it is hard for players who play deeper. They don’t get to be Hugo Ekitike who plays football like he is using it to warm up for a big night out. He’s full of exuberance. He backs himself and we back him too. I love how this crowd loves him. There are shiny things everywhere, transfer records, living legends, Dominik Fucking Szoboszlai, but Ekitike preens himself as the shiniest and we love a lad who backs himself.
Mo Salah spends the first-half being brilliant and the second digging in. He won’t stop in his pursuit of the points. He’s a nightmare to play against because he has it all, and it all includes that will to win. He is with the collective in a way which belies modern greatness. Argentina created a platform for Messi but Salah will carry the whole platform on his back if that’s what it takes.
The centre-halves are excellent when worked and move the ball well when not. The captain owns and runs the gaff. Konate enjoys the scrap.
Liverpool embrace it being hard because they have those two and that goalkeeper. They embrace the football match getting horrible. They’ve had their week and they know that Virgil van Dijk is constant, that Ibou Konate is first.
And they know how good The Blues are. The first-half is a Liverpool manager anticipating the game perfectly and knowing where the holes are. The second is a small gamble, influenced by the Evertonian intensity.
I would like the Derby to always have a week either side. Maybe two. Maybe days of press conferences leading up and open training. In my mind it ought to be that way because this is the game I most want to win, home and away. But we don’t have that luxury.
What we have instead is warriors, is control of the scoreboard, on top of territory. 3,000 Evertonians stay to show their appreciation of valiant efforts and good on them all round. No side, no snide. This is a decent Everton side for whom 8th is of far more interest than 18th.
But we’re blessed, genuinely blessed, that they see the crescent but we get the whole of the moon in this moment. Liverpool have fifteen points, are the reigning Champions and are improving game by game.
Today the city gets to be ours, metaphorically and literally. The idea of going in after they took points off us would have been heartbreaking. The weekend gets to be ours too. Massive game tomorrow for the challengers to the Champions.
These are the days of our lives, however precarious a second-half it felt. These are the days we will look back on with love and affection.
Be there, two o’clock by the fountain down the road.
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