Evertonians cherish every Merseyside Derby victory and while Leighton Baines took this 2-1 success for his Under-18s side at Finch Farm in his stride, remaining calm throughout and staying back to pick up equipment from the touchline after his jubilant young charges had returned to the dressing room, he’ll know just how important it feels to his players.
Baines, 38 next month, was part of the last senior Everton team to defeat Liverpool at Goodison Park more than a dozen, long years ago.
The occasion – as if you need reminding – was the 2-0 victory on October 17, 2010 as goals from Tim Cahill and Mikel Arteta secured a welcome three points for David Moyes’ men and left Roy Hodgson’s side languishing in the relegation zone despite the beleaguered Reds boss insisting it had been their best performance of the season to date. Liverpool’s new US owners John W Henry and Tom Werner were present to check out their recently-acquired purchase for the first time but while they’ve remained at the helm since, Hodgson was out of the door some 84 days later.
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The long-serving Moyes would remain in charge of Everton until the end of the 2012/13 season and has subsequently been followed in the Blues dugout by Roberto Martinez, Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafael Benitez and now Frank Lampard but none of them have been able to record a home win over their neighbours with only the legendary Italian registering a victory of any sort to end the club’s 21-year Anfield hoodoo but that came in the sterile and surreal circumstances of coronavirus-induced behind-closed-doors matches in which many long-standing sequences of results were broken.
It actually took Liverpool 90 years to move ahead of Everton when it came to Merseyside Derby wins but such has been the Reds’ domination in the fixture in recent decades, all of the teenagers on the pitch here will have grown up knowing such meetings to be very one-sided affairs.
Although Lampard’s side had their moments against Jurgen Klopp’s visitors when they last met on September 3 in what was an entertaining stalemate, with the club’s new stadium scheduled to be ready for the 2024/25 season, the Blues might well have only one more Goodison Park opportunity to defeat their rivals from across Stanley Park while they remain just that. Who knows, perhaps some of those on show here might have made the step up to the first team by the time Everton relocate to the banks of the Mersey, so having gained experience of defeating the Reds at any level could prove valuable.
Winning Derby matches has become largely a forgotten art for those in royal blue jerseys in recent times but Baines recognised you have to play with your heads as well as your heart, striking the right balance between commitment and composure and at times he could be heard telling his lads to “just settle down” as the game threatened to descend into a messy war of attrition. From an Everton point of view though there was plenty to admire about this display though and they could easily have won by a far greater margin had it not been for Liverpool goalkeeper Luke Hewitson making a string of impressive saves.
A couple of the cosmopolitan talents who optimise the multinational world the Premier League now is – at both senior and academy level – netted the Blues’ two goals. Martin Sherif, who opened the scoring, is a Dutchman who was born in Liberia while Coby Ebere, who grabbed the second, is originally from Germany but eligible to play for both England and Nigeria. Each of them looked powerful, purposeful and intelligent but there’s always going to be room for some home-grown heroes in derby combat too.
Sam Coughlan might wear the number 10 shirt but like Anthony Gordon, he’s not afraid to put in a tackle and show graft as well as craft while fellow Scouser and season ticket holder Jack Tierney, who wore the captain’s armband, was a commanding presence at the back akin to a youthful version of his boyhood hero Phil Jagielka, another of Baines’ team-mates from that day in 2010. There’s clearly a long way to go for all of these prospects but days like these are priceless when it comes to their footballing education.
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