3 Interesting Observations from the Merseyside Derby

What a derby match; it’s everything you could ask for from a local derby and to top it all off, we come through as winners. I’m pretty sure if we’d been on the end of some pretty dodgy decisions and come out as losers I wouldn’t have the same opinion but you have to just accept the way the dice roll and, on Saturday morning, we got the the luck of the decisions whereas, in previous weeks, we’ve come off as the unlucky side.

That said, there are a few things that stuck with me from the weekend and the first of these is related to the above and that is this: our lovely neighbours find themselves incapable from separating when something is the fault of Liverpool and when it is the fault of the referee. Just as an example of what I’m talking about – a friend of mine has (what is it now, four days later?) recently posted a gallery on Facebook showing pictures of rash challenges by Red players in derbies over the last decade that have gone unpunished by the referee. Now he may claim that he is pointing out poor decisions by referees against his own club but he could just as easily have shown off pictures of rash challenges from United players or Chelsea but the fact that he chose Liverpool only serves to support the Evertonian view that we are somehow culpable for the decisions a poor referee makes.

I freely admit that, initially it looked like a sending off but on reflection even a yellow would have been harsh but that isn’t my fault, as a Liverpool fan. Nor is it Luis Suarez’s, as a Liverpool player. If the referee had been uncertain about the harshness or brevity of the challenge, then he should have consulted his assistants. If Luis Suarez confused him slightly by rolling around, why can he not have hurt himself merely from avoiding the challenge to protect his own ankles, why does it have to immediately be his fault that Rodwell was on the end of a poor decision? As controversial as this might sound, I still think it is all just a symptom of a long-standing problem for Everton fans: they are more comfortable when they’re playing the victim than when they’re winning. I have Evertonians as friends and in my family (my dad being one) and I try to play fair on derby day but all that happened on Saturday was that they received a single poor decision and we simply took advantage of that; you can only play the team that’s in front of you and we did and we won. The end.

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