The greatest Merseyside derbies of all time as Liverpool prepare to face Everton

As we prepare ourselves for the 243^rd Merseyside Derby this afternoon – and wonder how Everton will make a meal of it this time – we thought it would be fun to take a look back at five of the greatest derby day games in Liverpudlian history. At least in the Premier League – we haven’t got a time machine, so let’s keep it recent-ish.

These are the most fiercely-fought of the lot, the most pulsating and dramatic matches played out between two of English football’s greatest rivals – featuring red cards aplenty, catastrophic own goals, controversy and an awful lot of fun. Everton even won one of them, believe it or not.

5. Liverpool 1-0 Everton (December 2018)

Of course, one of the honest truths of derby games is that a lot of them struggle to live up to the hype, and there have been quite a few encounters between Everton and Liverpool which involved two sets of players desperately trying to avoid defeat. That was certainly the case with at least one of the sides in this game, when Everton dug deep and pulled out an immense defensive performance for 90 minutes – only to blow it all right at the death.

The blame lies at the feet – or more precisely hands – of the unfortunate Jordan Pickford, who found himself with the task of trying to do something with Virgil van Dijk’s scuffed volley that was looping slowly onto the bar. Should he wait for the rebound and claim it? Tip it over? Or try and grab it too early, miss it, and let it bounce back into the path of a Liverpool striker? Pickford picked option three and Divock Origi, the striker who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time when Liverpool badly needed a goal, was left with a simple header to win the match and send the Kop crazy.

4. Liverpool 0-1 Everton (September 1999)

Astonishingly, you have to go back 24 years to find the last time that Everton won in front of Liverpool’s home crowd – they’ve won once at Anfield since, but that was during the pandemic and there was nobody there to see it. There’s something deeply Evertonian about finally earning the local bragging rights, only to be unable to go and rub it in anybody’s faces because of social distancing. They could at least legally throw some banter about from a two-metre distance.

Anyway, this was one of those Merseyside derbies that rapidly descends into a chaotic farce once the tension ramps up and the tackles start flying. Kevin Campbell ghosted between two Liverpool defenders to smack the ball past Sander Westerveld just four minutes into the game to put Everton ahead, and while that was it for the scoring, it wasn’t the end of the drama.

With about 15 minutes left of an increasingly tense affair, it all got a bit too much for at least two players – Westervelt got into it with Francis Jeffers over some innocuous bit of argy-bargy or other and they both got shown a red card. Which was less than ideal for Liverpool, as they’d already used their subs, so Irish defender Steve Staunton had to step in between the sticks. Then a certain youngster called Steven Gerrard decided to make life even more interesting for the full-back by getting himself sent off for a scything challenge with a minute of normal time left to play, sparking a brawl which put another five players in the book. Still, Staunton kept a clean sheet, which I imagine he brings up at the pub fairly often.

3. Everton 1-2 Liverpool (October 2007)

Another match in which the referee was more than a little involved in the action – Mark Clattenburg was the whistle-wafter for this one, and boy did he give that thing a good tooting. Except for one or two occasions when he probably should have.

Everton got off to a great start and were rewarded when Sami Hyppiä decided to slice a cross into the top corner of his own net 37 minutes in – but it was in the second half when things got a bit spicy. First, Tony Hibbert was sent off for bringing Gerrard down just inside the box – or was it outside? Contact certainly seemed to start before the Liverpool captain made it into the penalty area, but it was given as inside and Dirk Kuyt put the penalty away to equalise. To make it a little more interesting, Clattenburg initially only booked Hibbert before realising that he was the lastest of last men and changing his mind.

Then Everton were denied a penalty for what appeared to be a tug of the shirt on Joleon Lescott. Then Clattenburg only showed Kuyt a yellow for a mid-air flying karate kick of a tackle, which admittedly missed its target completely. Then Lucas Leiva blasted a shot at goal which was brilliantly blocked on the goal-line by the ‘keeper, with the only slight problem being that the ‘keeper in question was Phil Neville and he wasn’t wearing any gloves. Another red card, another penalty, another one for Kuyt. Then, to wrap it all up, Lescott was hauled down in the box again, this time deep into injury time and as blatantly as could be asked, only for Clattenburg to wave it away. Everton one, Liverpool two, the referee quite a few.

2. Everton 3-3 Liverpool (November 2013)

It only took ten minutes for both sides to get themselves on the scoresheet in a match which turned out to be a proper thriller, right down to a last-gasp equaliser. Philippe Coutinho slotted home from close range to give Liverpool the lead, Kevin Mirallas prodded home a second ball from a deep cross, and the stage was set.

Luís Suarez put the Reds ahead again with a brilliant 20-yard free-kick which curled round the wall and right into the bottom corner, and the game went practically end to end for ages with Simon Mignolet pulling off a string of brilliant saves until a young Romelu Lukaku decided to take charge of the affair, at least for a little while. The Belgian got his first with a powerful side-footed strike on 72 minutes, and then ten minutes later headed home from a corner to send Goodison Park into raptures.

But Merseyside derbies love a late twist, and it was provided by Daniel Sturridge, flicking Gerrard’s tempting cross into the back of the net after something of a siege – and Victor Moses could so easily have wrapped it all up just moments later when he nipped in front of Tim Howard only to somehow knock it over the bar. A humdinger of a game which never paused for breath.

1. Everton 2-3 Liverpool (April 2001)

What a game this was, and what a blast from the past watching the highlights back was – Gary McAllister, Emile Heskey, Duncan Ferguson… it’s a whole series of Premier League Years all by itself. And it was Hesky who opened the scoring with a well-placed finish from a lightning counter-attack, before Ferguson lashed a loose ball into the back of the net with astonishing fury and set a classic in motion.

The second half was where the real thrills lay – Markus Babbel taking advantage of some incredibly bad defending to power home Robbie Fowler’s eminently-clearable cross before Fowler himself missed a golden opportunity to extend Liverpool’s lead when he smacked a (mercifully uncontroversial) penalty against the post after being bundled over by Richard Gough, another player whose name we hadn’t thought about in years.

Igor Bišćan upped the dramatic ante a little further by getting a second yellow card with about a quarter of an hour left – the game saw no fewer than 11 yellows waved by Jeff Winter all told – and then the referee gave Everton a penalty with just minutes remaining for some holding in the box which David Unsworth smashed home. 2-2 with barely any time left to play… but something was always going to happen, and it was one of the great half-forgotten free-kick goals in Premier League history.

McAllister was the better part of 40 yards out as Everton goalkeeper Paul Gerrard organised his defence with everyone preparing for a deep ball – including Gerrard, who was positioned well to the right of his goal readying himself to dive into the fray to claim it. Except McAllister spotted the opening that allowed to the left of the goal and laced it all the way into the corner with the unfortunate Gerrard left flailing. A magnificent match.