IT’S a grand old ground to play at. And a grand old fixture to contest.
And if you know your history you will be aware that today — after a 130-year stretch — Goodison Park stages its final Merseyside derby.
Next season, assuming Everton perform their annual escape from relegation, they will entertain Liverpool at a brand spanking new 53,000-seater home at Bramley-Moore Dock.
Remarkably, these Scouse squabbles at Goodison are tied at 41 wins apiece in all competitions as we head into this lunchtime scrap.
How Sean Dyche’s men would love to secure an overall aggregate victory by stunning the runaway Premier League leaders on their final visit to the famous old stadium.
Once referred to as the ‘friendly derby’, with no strict segregation of rival supporters, these days the Mersey derby is anything but.
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It has seen more red cards brandished than any other Premier League fixture — 23 since the current version of the top flight began in 1992.
And with Everton the snarling underdogs for so long, Mersey derbies are especially spiky at the historic ground of the Toffees.
Goodison Park is an antique gem — short on legroom, high on atmosphere, hemmed in by terraced houses and home to one of the last remaining classic stands to have been designed by the great football architect Archibald Leitch.
When Everton are in severe need of a result — or any time that the ‘red lot’ crosses Stanley Park — the place becomes a roaring cauldron.
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Such as Wednesday’s 4-0 drubbing of fellow strugglers Wolves which afforded Dyche’s men breathing space at the foot of the table.
Theirs is the sort of old-school ground which probably earns its home team several points per season . . . and has therefore saved Everton from relegation more than once in recent years.
That was rarely more apparent than in the penultimate derby at the venue, in April, when previous Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp suffered his first Goodison defeat in his last clash with Everton.
The Reds received a thorough ‘Dycheing’ as the Toffees bombarded their illustrious rivals, goals from Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Jarrad Branthwaite earning a 2-0 victory.
That result virtually guaranteed Everton’s Premier League survival.
And — as every Evertonian is keen to point out — it ensured that the sainted Klopp would end up with fewer league titles than either Howard Kendall or Harry Catterick.
It also ended the Reds’ longest unbeaten run at Everton’s home — dating back 12 matches to 2010 — during Roy Hodgson’s doomed Liverpool reign.
Everton played at Anfield until 1892, having the previous year won the first of their nine league titles at what became the home of a rival club not then in existence.
The Toffees upped sticks and left to build Goodison Park after a boardroom split with the club’s majority owner John Houlding.
He found himself with a stadium but no team to play in it — and so in the summer of 1892 founded Liverpool FC.
There have been plenty of cracking Goodison derbies since Everton won the first one 3-0 in 1894.
But the greatest, and most significant, of the previous 119 meetings is beyond debate. It was a gloriously chaotic FA Cup fifth-round replay in February 1991 which ended in a 4-4 draw.
Liverpool took the lead four times, with Everton equalising four times — twice through Graham Sharp and twice through Tony Cottee.
Reds boss Kenny Dalglish quit two days later and his club’s 15-year reign as the undoubted powerhouse of English football ended with that resignation.
Cottee arrived as a sub to level the tie late in normal tie and then again late in extra-time — nutmegging Bruce Grobbelaar, who had been guilty of some eccentric goalkeeping throughout the match.
Ian Rush, one of Liverpool’s scorers that day, will recall more fondly the November 1982 derby.
The Welshman netted four times in a 5-0 victory — aided and abetted by an extraordinarily bad high-line Everton offside trap.
That was one of Kendall’s first derbies in charge.
But his tenure brought about a golden age of Merseyside football in the mid-to-late 1980s when meetings between the city’s two clubs were often title deciders.
Another happy memory for Liverpool was the ridiculous 44-yard free-kick winner scored deep into injury-time by their veteran Gary McAllister to secure a 3-2 victory in April 2001.
Evertonians go misty-eyed about a 3-0 humping of their neighbours in September 2006, when Andy Johnson netted twice and Jamie Carragher — a boyhood Blue — endured a stinker for the Reds.
One of the more recent classics was a hectic November 3-3 draw in 2013 when, under Roberto Martinez and Brendan Rodgers, both clubs were at their most wide-open and watchable.
This is the longest-running continuously-held major British derby — with both clubs having been permanent fixtures in the top flight since the year The Beatles released their first single, 1962.
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Next season, the derby is all set to have a new stage.
Tomorrow, Goodison, with its authentic charm, will give Liverpool one final ear-bashing.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
