Liverpool 1-0 Everton: Diogo Jota's smart finish sees Reds go 12 points clear at top of the Premier League as they win nervy Merseyside derby
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- Liverpool entertained Everton in the second Merseyside derby of the season
- The Reds picked up a 1-0 win thanks to Diogo Jota's smart second half finish
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The good news for Liverpool is that this may be as hard as it gets. The only team wishing to deny them as badly as Everton between now and the end of the season will be Arsenal and by the time they visit Anfield on May 10, this title race may be all but over.
This was difficult for Liverpool. It really was desperately difficult. Emotional, tense and occasionally petty, everything that a derby usually is but at the same time everything a team chasing only its second league title in 35 years doesn’t need a game to be.
Deep into injury time – at around about the time Everton and James Tarkowski got them at Goodison Park in mid-February – the nerves that had threatened to derail Liverpool in the first half were back. They were giving the ball away needlessly and inviting pressure.
At the death Everton won a corner. Goalkeeper Jordan Pickford advanced and Anfield inhaled. It came to nothing and Anfield exhaled. And a minute later it was over. A major obstacle overcome, a big step taken.
So now Arne Slot and his players are a little closer to heaven, a little nearer to their journey’s end.
The lead over Arsenal is 12 points again and now Liverpool need four wins and not five. On Sunday Liverpool are at Fulham 24 hours after Arsenal play at Everton. This is how it tends to work at this stage of the season. The psychology of it all can feel overwhelming.
And that is why this win was so important. Had they not won this game, Liverpool’s lead would still have been vast. But the mood would have been different. More noise, more questions, more pressure.
As it is, they will feel they have passed a real test and the truth is that they Liverpool deserved this victory. Everton did their damndest to deny them.
Tarkowski, their captain, should have been sent off early on but wasn’t and then, with Virgil van Dijk asleep on the half hour, visiting striker Beto struck a post.
The game was anyone’s at that point. It was scrappy and directionless. So at times were Liverpool. But the crucial part is that they settled down. They played their football. They got better. And then they scored a really quite super goal to win the game.
Having been starved of space in the first half, an increase in intensity from Liverpool from that point led to some of the broken play on which they thrive.
When Diogo Jota picked up the ball 30 yards from goal in the 57th minute, he played it forward to Luis Diaz on the edge of the penalty area. In old money the Colombian was offside but he didn’t attempt to play the ball until Tarkowski had intercepted it.
Then he was aware enough to step in, back heel it to Jota and watch as his team-mate eased past two defenders – one of them Tarkowski – to pull a low right foot shot past Pickford down the centre of the goal.
Despite his injury issues, Jota remains very important to Liverpool and here he was nerveless. Afterwards Everton manager David Moyes was upset by the offside call – even though it was correct – but strangely less so by the Tarkowski tackle.
Only a few minutes had passed when the former Burnley defender beat Alexis MacAllister to a loose ball but followed through so recklessly that he took his opponent high and ugly with his studs.
The referee reached for a yellow card and the VAR officials had a look and cleared it. That felt strange.
For a while Liverpool really struggled. They had looked anxious in the tunnel beforehand and the feeling lingered.
Mo Salah headed at Pickford while Jarred Branthwaite blocked a Jota shot. That apart, Everton – sitting deep with a line of five in front of a line of four – looked reasonably comfortable.
The visitors carried a first half threat on the counter, too. Van Dijk was, frankly, all over the place whenever Everton tried to hit Beto from deep.
Once the Portuguese forward embarrassed him to put the ball in the net only to be ruled offside. Then he did it again but struck the post when clean through.
That, after half an hour, was a huge moment. A goal for Everton at that point would have presented Liverpool with an enormous mental challenge.
As it was, it was pretty much Everton’s final attempt on goal of the whole game.
Slot had laid in to his players after a poor first half here against Southampton three and a half weeks ago and maybe he did it again here.
Whatever the case, Liverpool improved. Their set pieces were consistently poor. Corner after corner was wasted. But from open play they started to threaten more regularly.
Ryan Gravenberch made Pickford parry from 25 yards as Salah sniffed the rebound. Then Jota had a shot on the turn that was blocked before Salah got round the back to cross dangerously.
Everton were starting to blow as the hour approached. Chasing a football can do that to you. It was not a huge surprise when the goal arrived and from that point on for Liverpool it was all about handling the game.
Everton didn’t throw the sink at it until late on. They knew a cavalry charge would risk a Liverpool second. So it remained on a knife edge until the end. We should not be saying the same about the title race in a month’s time.
‘We shall not be moved,’ sang the Kop and there was a certain amount of confidence about that.
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