Veterans of Merseyside derbies marvel that they now feature a club owned by Fenway Sports Group and Dynasty Equity and one possibly being bought by 777 Partners from a business partner of a sanctioned Russian oligarch. If modern football is an arms race between portfolios and business models, some elements of Liverpool v Everton remain undisturbed. There’s always fuel for the feud: red cards and contentious refereeing calls. And in this renewal of English football’s saltiest rivalry you could bet your house on one eternal verity: Mohamed Salah would make the difference.
With a penalty and a cool finish in added time, Salah moved to 146 Premier League goals, stretching his influence on Jürgen Klopp’s side to 29 goal “involvements” in his last 24 Premier League appearances – 18 goals and 11 assists.
Salah’s second, from a Darwin Núñez breakaway, was a diagram of how Liverpool’s best player has adorned the Klopp era. On the gallop, Núñez slid the ball across the penalty box. Salah paused, looked up, then relaxed his feet to caress the ball on a curling path away from Jordan Pickford. Soft shoes, hard heart in front of goal.
With the breaking of Everton’s resistance, which caused them to pack their own penalty box as if they were President Pickford’s bodyguards, Liverpool moved (briefly) to the top of the league as Klopp thumped his chest in his familiar Kop-stoking style.
Liverpool’s self-labelled reset has rendered every game a test of their ability to fight for the title again after a lengthening period of dominance by Manchester City, and Arsenal’s revival. Each match is an examination too of Klopp’s team-rebuilding skills and Liverpool’s recruitment. But Klopp is a manager who likes life on the edge, who prides himself on his personnel changes in games and will take extra pleasure from how Liverpool overcame an Everton side demonically dedicated to blocking and stopping.
This Liverpool squad looks light at left-back, where Andy Robertson will undergo shoulder surgery. His understudy, Kostas Tsimikas, was a long way short here of the required standard. We know too that Alexis Mac Allister is miscast as defensive midfielder and needs relocating to a more creative role when Fabinho and Jordan Henderson can be fully replaced.
But there the negatives cease. Liverpool were tactically smart, using the full width of the pitch to stop Everton bulldozing through the centre of the pitch. They tried to inflict death by long flat diagonals to Luis Díaz and Salah. Mac Allister hit some exquisite balls towards the touchlines to send Everton scurrying backwards. The execution around Pickford’s goal was lacking. But the array of Liverpool’s attacking – its variety and fluidity – offered more evidence that Klopp is aiming to overwhelm opponents with talents and threats.
Salah, Diogo Jota, Núñez, Cody Gapko and Díaz are a formidable quintet. Assisted by the midfield abilities of Dominik Szoboszlai, Mac Allister, Harvey Elliott, Ryan Gravenberch, Curtis Jones and Stefan Bajcetic, Liverpool can develop a critical mass of dangerous players who would make them title contenders once more.
The caveat is a defensive record that aroused doubt before this reassuring clean sheet but may do so again against tougher opposition. Only twice in nine Premier League matches this season has Alisson’s net remained undisturbed. The questionable defensive screen in front of Virgil van Dijk emboldens opposition managers and forwards. The responsibility piled on Salah to offset defensive frailty with his goals is less onerous than last season but will stay with him in this campaign as well.
When Michael Keane let his arm poke out an angle as Díaz tried to cross in the Everton box, it was Salah who faced the Kop with the ball on the penalty spot. His strike past Pickford carried all the authority of a finisher who has now passed Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard on the list of Liverpool scorers at Anfield to go fifth in that table.
Van Dijk praised Salah’s relentless energy. Szoboszlai talked about how the Egyptian always “trusts himself” with the net in view. Nobody mentioned the other big development in Salah’s life: this week’s social media post expressing sympathy for the innocent victims of war in Gaza and his call for “humanity” to prevail. In Egypt, Salah’s homeland, the crisis in Israel and Gaza resonates more deeply than most of us at Anfield could imagine.
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In all Klopp’s reconstructive work, he retains an asset Everton could only dream of sending out in blue. For months the spectre of Salah moving to Saudi Arabia has never quite lifted. There will be life after Salah for Liverpool, but in this phase of escaping the relative slump of last year they will still need their “Egyptian King” to win them games that otherwise would have hung in the balance.
Klopp knows it. As long as he can keep his No 11 at gamechanging level he can continue all his clever restorative work with a degree of comfort all managers love to have. “The numbers are crazy and he will never stop,” Klopp said of the man who broke Everton’s will. “That’s his nature.”
