Premier League Merseyside Derby Match 3
Everton FC 2:0 Liverpool FC
Souness filling flawed bucket
Opposition Manager - Oliver GlasnerTHE group of fans chanting 'Souness must stay' outside Goodison Park on
Saturday wore Everton blue. It was their way of adding an ironic postscript to
Liverpool's latest embarrassment.
A few more defeats like this and the Anfield board will be saying something similar. Except that the words will carry a different inflection and will be followed by a question mark - 'Souness must stay?'
Unless results improve, the fudge which reaffirmed Graeme Souness's position last May, when even the manager himself had expected to be paid off, will have merely postponed the crisis.
The renewed optimism engendered by impressive victories over Sheffield Wednesday, QPR and Swindon now appears to have been built on quicksand.
Liverpool have lost four matches out of five and failed to score in their last three.
Saturday's 20 defeat by an honest, hard-working but largely artless Everton side confirmed the flaws revealed by Coventry and Blackburn. Souness's policy of buying hard men for the defence is doing nothing to add speed and sinew to his midfield.
Liverpool are again a soft-boiled egg of a team. Once a crack has appeared the results are likely to be messy. Horne and Ebbrell dominated Redknapp and Whelan, and the latter's only response was to leave a row of stud marks down Ebbrell's back.
Everton's goals, one in each half, followed basic defensive errors. McManaman's weak attempt to clear a poor corner from Hinchcliffe first time gave Ward a long range shooting opportunity he accepted with alacrity. Dicks's failure to deal with a bouncing ball allowed Cottee to steal possession and meander away from Wright and Grobbelaar before finding the net through the centre-back's legs.
Grobbelaar's fury with McManaman after the first goal may have reflected a deeper anger with the pattern of events as a whole. The Liverpool goalkeeper had made a series of saves to keep his team in the match and none better than the first, when he flung himself across the goalmouth to keep out a glancing header from Jackson.
For Grobbelaar, McManaman's sloppy clearance and Walters's sluggish reaction to the danger must have summed up Liverpool's enduring malaise. McManaman's second error was to answer Grobbelaar back. Some unseemly pushing and shoving followed.
For Anfield supporters the spectacle of Liverpool players squaring up to one another at Goodison, of all places, surely represents a new nadir. True, Grobbelaar did get a bit physical with Beglin in the 1986 FA Cup final when Everton threatened to deny Liverpool the Double, but this incident was quickly forgotten as Molby and Rush turned the game around. Molby was not playing on Saturday, and Rush looked like a groin strain waiting to happen.
Afterwards Souness opted for the sackcloth-and-ashes approach, declaring Everton to be the better side while confessing his own unhappiness with Liverpool's present form. Souness, however, is like the man with a hole in his bucket whose search for ways to repair it keeps bringing him back to the need for a fresh supply of water. The more players he buys the more he appears to need.
Apart from the error which led to Everton's second goal Dicks, Liverpool's latest purchase, made an encouraging start at left-back. He tackled solidly, supported the attack and produced one of the best shots of the match when Liverpool pulled themselves together for a period after half-time. The devil in Dicks, moreover, lay dormant. He was spoken to only once by the referee, who told him to pull up his right sock.
Elsewhere umpteen million poundsworth of talent accumulated by Souness searched for cohesion and balance, rhythm and blend.
This week Liverpool visit Fulham in the Coca-Cola Cup. Their next two Premiership fixtures are against Chelsea and Arsenal. Unless results improve, the wisdom of retaining Souness while giving Roy Evans a higher profile as his assistant without actually making him manager will continue to be questioned. Already it is looking an unhappy compromise.
'Am I allowed to smile?' asked Howard Kendall, the Everton manager, whose own position will have been strengthened for the time being. Kendall rightly stressed the importance of winning the ball and then said something rather odd.
He spoke of people who recalled the days of Everton's School of Science, 'when players put their foot on the ball, made defence-splitting passes and scored great goals', as if they were eccentrics out of touch with the modern game. A depressing sentiment coming from an Everton manager. Silly, too, when at the other end of the East Lancs Road Cantona remains such an obvious example to the contrary.
Liverpool: 1 Grobbelaar, 5 Wright, 4 Nicol, 25 Ruddock, 3 Dicks, 15 Redknapp, 12 Whelan, 11 Walters (18 Rosenthal 52), 17 McManaman (8 Stewart 65), 7 Clough, 9 Rush
Unused Subs: 24 Hooper
Bookings: Whelan, Redknapp, Clough
Shirt Worn: Home-Red
Manager: Graeme Souness
Everton: 1 Southall, 12 Holmes, 2 Jackson, 6 Ablett, 3 Hinchcliffe, 7 Ward, 10 Horne, 14 Ebbrel, 11 Beagrie (16 Preki 81), 15 Rideout, 9 Cottee
Unused Subs: 13 Kearton, 22 Angell
Goal(s): Ward (27), Cottee (85)
Booking: Ebbrel
Shirt Worn: Blue
Manager: Howard Kendall
Referee: David Elleray Harrow-on-the-Hill
Attendance: 38157
Venue: Goodison Park
Kick Off: Saturday - 15:00:00
Date: 1993-09-18
HT/FT: LL (0-1)/0-2
Goal Sequence (Liverpool first): 0-1, 0-2
Competition: Premiership
Position at Start of match day: 5 / Opposition Position at Start of match day: 8
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