Upwardly-mobile hosts are raising expectations heading into the first showdown against Liverpool at Hill Dickinson Stadium
David Moyes extended sympathy and support for Arne Slot – which may not be what any Liverpool manager wishes to hear from an Everton counterpart before a Merseyside derby – yet could not resist the temptation to stir up some local rivalry in the same breath. There was a gleam in the eye and a barely suppressed grin on Moyes’s face as he ridiculed one of the reasons Slot has presented for the champions’ decline this season.
“Absolutely,” said the Everton manager when asked whether he sympathised with Slot’s predicament, just 12 months after he was on the verge of winning the Premier League title in his debut season. “Arne Slot has done a brilliant job and, I have got to say, he is really good coach. That is from a neutral point of view.
“But I’m not having him saying they are getting bad decisions at Anfield because if you ask any Premier League manager over football history, they will tell you that if there is one club that gets all the decisions it is Liverpool Football Club. If they are getting a few bad ones at the moment, well, we have had to put up with them for years. There are very few decisions that go against Liverpool at Anfield. Very few. I actually think Liverpool supporters would agree with that if they were being honest as well. But as a coach, I think he’s a top coach.”
Moyes has never won at Anfield as a visiting manager and his dig was a little tongue-in-cheek, much like the tifo that the Everton supporters group the 1878s has prepared for the first Merseyside derby to be held at Hill Dickinson Stadium. Entitled The Originals, it features three of Everton’s homes in the city – Hill Dickinson, Goodison Park and Anfield – the Liver Bird that adorned the club’s league championship-winning medal in 1891 and the Beatles in a scarf changed from red to blue. An image of the tifo provoked a predictable slanging match when leaked this week.
Everton might appear in wind-up mode ahead of the 248th derby but that should not be mistaken for overconfidence in Moyes’s case. “We could still finish 14th,” the Scot claimed as he surveyed the congested nature of the Premier League table. Indeed, his team could finish the weekend in 12th should results conspire against them. But there is no doubt that Everton bring momentum and expectation into Sunday’s derby given their current form, the emphatic defeat of Chelsea in their last home game in particular, and Liverpool’s turbulent, inconsistent campaign.
There were 11 teams and 36 points between Liverpool and Everton at the end of last season, when the financial disparity between the two clubs was starkly exposed by their respective record turnovers of £703m and £196.7m. There are currently two teams and five points between the local rivals. Champions League qualification is in Liverpool’s hands but the fact Everton still harbour hope of claiming a European place with six games remaining of the first full season of Moyes’s second spell in charge is testament to their manager’s impact.
Moyes has been reluctant to talk up Everton’s prospects of qualifying for Europe this season but he accepts it could have a transformative effect on a club that was accustomed to fighting relegation and Premier League points deductions before he returned 15 months ago. “It would hopefully get the club back to somewhere where people have more respect for it,” the Everton manager said. “Not a club that’s seen as having financial problems but has built a new stadium and is trying to regroup.
“I know the outcome of what it does for the support, not just here but globally, if you get European football. It’s a big thing because of the coverage of European football. It would be a big thing for us and for our owners and for the new people here to see what Everton Football Club is really like.
“It is a different club now to what it’s been over the last three or four years, however long it’s been. It has been a competitive club for most of the time I can remember. I want us to get back to that. We have always struggled to spend as much as a Liverpool or some of the other clubs but we’ve always tried to make ourselves competitive and I’d like to do that again. I don’t know if we have jumped two steps instead of one at a time [this season], but we need to try to keep pushing along because it won’t be me for ever. I better keep banging the drum and seeing if I can find a way of getting us a bit higher up as quick as I can.”
Moyes was – and still is – stunned by the amount of players who rejected a move to Everton last summer on account of the lack of European football on offer and the club’s poor financial reputation before The Friedkin Group took over and repaired the balance sheet. “It was a surprise,” he reflected. “I want to bring players here who the Evertonians can see will make a difference and can bring something new, and I found it really difficult at the start. If you look back on the numbers we took to America last summer for the Premier League tournament, we had very few players with us at all.
“It was a job that I knew was going to be difficult but became increasingly difficult every time I was on the phone. I must have had conversations with 12 different players and I can’t remember how many said no but thankfully Kiernan [Dewsbury-Hall] and Jack [Grealish] said yes. It must have been me putting them off when I spoke to them.”
Everton will be a more attractive proposition when this summer’s transfer window opens. Just how attractive will be determined by the next six games and, despite the mischievous dig over refereeing decisions at Anfield, Moyes considers Liverpool a benchmark for Everton to pursue. “I don’t think we can kid ourselves on here, Liverpool have always had a top side,” he said. “Top players, spent plenty, so it has always been a challenge for us here at Everton. It has never been easy but if we can keep closing the gap that’ll be good.”
