SUNDAY sees Goodison Park host the Merseyside derby. In volume terms it will be the quietest ever game between Everton and Liverpool but that will only make the howls of despair seem louder at the final whistle if the home team fail to win.
Because not only will the red half of the city have inched closer to their first league title for 30 years, it will also mean Everton’s long run without a win against their neighbours will have been extended yet further. A 2-0 win for the Blues in October 2010 was particularly enjoyable as it pushed Roy Hodgson’s Liverpool into 19th place in the table, but that match was also Liverpool’s first since being bought by John Henry and Fenway Sports Group, and since then any idea that the balance of power was shifting in the city has been utterly disproven.
Since that dark (for Liverpool) day in 2010 the Reds have reached three European finals, become European champions, world champions, recorded 97 points in a single league campaign and are now set to be crowned English champions for a 19th time. It’s hard reading for Evertonians and once they absorb the information below, I’m afraid they’ll probably feel even worse.
10 things that have happened since Everton last beat Liverpool
1) 2010 is quite a long time ago but not so far back that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo weren’t the world game’s star players. Since October 17 2010, Messi and Ronaldo have scored 671 league goals between them, which is 158 more than Everton in the same period.
2) Liverpool have long been the Premier League team to have been awarded the most penalties and it won’t placate Everton fans to learn that since October 2010, the Reds have had 61, Everton only 43.
3) Long benches of nine substitutes will be a feature of the restarted Premier League so Harvey Elliot can expect to get some game time in the next few weeks. He might not remember Everton beating Liverpool, though, given he had just started Year 3 at school when it last happened.
4) How many people have been born worldwide since you know what? Approximately 1.3 billion.
5) Five of the nine films in the Fast & Furious series have been released. Are they more furious than Everton fans are with this terrible run? Seems unlikely.
Turns out Liverpool reserves *are* the second best team on Merseyside
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) December 4, 2019
6) 1,016 different players have scored in the Premier League, from Sergio Aguero’s dartboard approved 180, down to 241 people with just a single goal. That includes Ricky van Wolfswinkel (who scored his only Premier League goal against Everton), Abou Diaby and some guy called Thierry Henry.
7) 68 players have scored Premier League hat-tricks, including two from Kevin Nolan, a man who is, let’s not forget, technically a millennial.
8) The UK has experienced four partial eclipses of the sun since Everton last defeated Liverpool.
9) 47 different human beings have gone into space since Liverpool last lost to Everton.
10) And finally, in what Everton supporters groups are calling “a huge boost”, no new elements have been added to the periodic table since they last defeated Liverpool, with the latest being Tennessine, officially announced in April 2010. Very much the Egil Olsen of the chemical elements, it is, of course, prepared by bombardment of berkelium with calcium. In scientific terms: hit the big man and feed off the scraps. Or Tim Cahill.
Conclusion
Look, it’s been a long time since Everton have got one over on their rivals but 2020 has seen a lot of unusual, epoch-shattering events so far and Liverpool leaving Goodison Park without at least a point could well be the craziest thing we’ve seen so far this year.
