Sat 25 Mar 06
Dowd’s Dirty Derby Dozen
Well, it was another hard-fought Merseyside derby today, with ref Phil Dowd handing out 12 cards, including a second yellow for Stephen Gerrard and a red to Everton’s Andy van der Meyde for dangerous play. A disappointing day for Everton, playing up a man for almost an hour, but they never got anything going. The day started with disappointment (and a growing sense of doom) for me when I heard Mikel Arteta would not play due to injury.
Everton would have been happy with the first half, but then Phil Neville opened the scoring for Liverpool in first half injury time. Defending a corner at the near post, Neville started moving out to challenge but then moved back toward goal to follow the flight of the ball, trying to prevent it going past the front of goal. Unfortunately for Everton, his header went right in the net.
Everton started the second half with more weak defending - Gary Naysmith playing way too wide and allowing Luis Garcia lots of space; keeper Richard Wright came out to challenge when he should have stayed home and Garcia lobbed it in.
Tim Cahill made it interesting with his patented late-arrival header in the 61st minute, but Everton couldn’t find anything else.
Weak defending featured in Liverpool’s third goal, with Tony Hibbert giving Harry Kewell lots of space and time to blast another one by Wright.
The sad fact is that an Arteta-less Everton side look like they’re playing a man down already.
Crouch had, I think, a bit of a touch on one of Liverpool’s goals, but he didn’t look very special out there today. When he had any possession, he looked awful. Putting aside some James Beattie bias, I think I’d be taking Dean Ashton to Germany over Crouchie.
Mike Campbell
The star of the game was the ref.
That’s not taking any credit away from the Kopites but more a case of there being a ref with little interest in letting the game be played by either team.
Far too many stoppages and cards.
Both red cards are debateable, a little common sense and a few words in players ears would have been much better for the game.
I totally agree with you about Arteta. The lad’s a different class of player and his set pieces would have caused problems for L’pool.
Our biggest weakness at the moment though, with or without Arteta, is Wright.
It’s time he was sent packing.
Not just because of his woeful positioning for the 2nd goal but because he’s been like that for seasons. The ‘he needs a run of games to get some confidence’ excuse has run too thin now. Try to sell him or just pay off his contract, he shouldn’t be allowed back into Goodison or Bellefield again.
Overall though they deserved to win. After Gerrard was sent off we went to pieces and then the Manc let us down (2nd Derby, 2nd time he’s let us down) and that was the end of the game really.
At 2-1 we looked like having a chance of getting a point but the subs should have been brought on when they were originally meant to come on and then we might have had more of a chance (and also VDM might not have been sent off.)
As for Crouch, I’d rather my Grandad played for England in the World Cup than him and he’s been dead for 20 years.
I don’t believe all this hype about him causing defences problems. He’s rubbish in the air (which for a 6′7″ guy is hard to do), not that skillful and doesn’t score that many goals. International level defences will not blink an eyelid if he plays.
WD, thanks for dropping by. Yeah, they have to find a Wright-free solution. Enjoyed your site, too, btw.