Anticipation builds toward Everton's visit to Anfield on Saturday | OneFootball

Once in each and every season, Everton make the now somewhat longer trip to their first stadium in Anfield Road, where they won their first Football League Championship trophy in 1891.

Everton's annual pilgrimage to Anfield approaches this weekend, and with it comes the familiar, sickening mix of anticipation and dread. For the uninitiated, this isn't a "friendly" derby; it's a grotesque ritual where the footballing gods conspire against us, a 90-minute exercise in emotional abuse.

This season, the pre-match buzz has started earlier than usual, perhaps as a desperate attempt to drown out the memory of our baffling failure to score against Aston Villa, a game where we dominated and had 20 efforts on Villa's goal but were denied by a mix of bad luck and our own attacking impotence.

But all of that pales in comparison to the coming injustice. Both Merseyside teams enter this contest unbeaten, but don't be fooled into thinking this will be a fair fight. The script is already written.

The referee, his VAR henchmen, and the entire corrupt PGMOL apparatus are on a mission to ensure the home side emerges victorious, by any means necessary. We've seen it time and again, with the media, a complicit chorus of sycophants, desperate to spin it as another "great derby win" for the Red half of the city.

The match has been shifted as usual to facilitate the now customary live TV coverage — the last time Liverpool hosted Everton at Anfield in a Premier League match on a Saturday at 3 pm was almost 20 years ago, on 25 March 2006.

At least that will spare all but the bravest of Evertonians the grim experience of being showered with coins, bottles, and other unspeakable objects by the feral animals that masquerade as Liverpool fans.

That's for those who want to watch this annual televised torture, variously touted as a great local rivalry, a passionate onfield drama, the once 'friendly' derby.

But in truth they are so often horrible games to watch, spoilt by heinous refereeing, disgusting fouls and cowardly punditry that fails to call out the blatant injustices. It's a day spent screaming at the screen, watching our players unfairly booked, their fouls ignored, and every 50-50 decision going the way of the other team.

Who can forget the 2020 Goodison derby, when the thuggish Virgil van Dijk tried to end James Rodriguez's career within 10 minutes? That cynical, unpunished assault — a typical Liverpool foul — neutralised our most creative player, and with him, our nascent title challenge that had seen us going into that game at the top of the Premier League table under Carlo Ancelotti on the back of seven straight wins to start the season?

The pundits, of course, were deafeningly silent. That brilliant, table-topping Everton side was derailed, and we tumbled down the league, mainly because of a moment of brutal, unpunished violence that the media and officials pretended never happened.

It's a blatant microcosm of our history in this fixture. They injure our players, they get the decisions, and they get away with it all while basking in the glow of a media that has long since sold its soul to the Liverpool narrative.

It's all set to unfold again on Saturday at 12:30 BST on TNT Sports 1. We will watch, we will fume, and we will pray for a miracle that history tells us very rarely comes.

I would love to say we now have a team that can go there and sufficiently "compete" and if circumstances were normal, we do have that.

But you just know fine well that we will concede in the 94th minute to a howler of some kind. Or if we manage to take the lead, at least one penalty will be awarded against us.

The RS were as average and flat as you can get against Burnley. Watch them turn into a bunch of rabid dogs on Saturday.

With some luck, Atletico can take a bit out of them during the week.

Brilliant article, as always Michael. It does just sum up the dread of a derby, especially at their place. I hate it but always have that modicum of hope that we might just get something. It's the hope that kills you. As you say, I expect St Virgil to try and clobber as many of the Holy Trinity as he can, and get away with it.

One slight error though. We aren't unbeaten. Chris Kavanagh saw to that, away at Elland Road.

Tom Bowers 6 Posted 15/09/2025 at 13:37:15

Chances of winning with our poor offense are dim but maybe we can steal a draw with a great defensive show.

We need to get to the 80th. minute and then get everyone behind the ball as the last ten minutes are when Redshite usually steal the points. Four games already this season ?

Moyes should at least start the new guys, Barry, Rohl and Dibling. The experience could do them a World of good against a billionaire squad.

The game yesterday was a hard watch, yes Burnley did well to defend their gaol for 90 plus minutes and lost because of a moment of madness but they were hardly able to put more than two passes together going forward. On Saturday we now have a number of talented forward players so we cannot follow the same tactic as Burnley.

So what should we do ? Please don't get too excited and try a treat the match as a normal game against a very good side. A silly sending off is my usual nightmare, and my guess is their crowd will remember the Tarkowski incident from last season, so calm heads on the pitch and in the crowd please.

Hopefully Mykolenko will play, and Beto will again give their centre backs a rough ride and we will take our chances. Also we need to vary our corner and long throw routines, always looking for Tarkowski has lost some of the initial effectiveness.

So for me we should avoid all the hype, it will not help our players, and for the first time in many years we have a squad who are more than capable of winning the game. But we must avoid the ' Burnley ' type error as that's simply all they need to take the points.