Enforced goalkeeping change is bad luck on Ronald Koeman’s side but they could not say the result was false on the balance of scoring chances created
Everyone in the Everton camp agreed that to have a chance in this derby it would be necessary to start against Liverpool the way they finished against Arsenal. That was not literally, of course. There would be no need to go down to 10 men and endure heart-in-the-mouth moments through having to block shots on the line but Everton needed to get out of the starting blocks early and display the controlled aggression that brought them the points last Tuesday.
“Toe to toe and face to face,” was how Ronald Koeman put it, which was perhaps unnecessary advice for the fixture that holds the Premier League record for red cards. The first few minutes were predictably breathless, with Romelu Lukaku winning his fair share of aerial challenges but finding few team‑mates in sufficiently close support, and James McCarthy putting so much crunch into his tackles one feared the ball would sooner or later require first-aid treatment.
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