Liverpool end Champions League tussle with Van Dijk sickener for Everton | OneFootball

Has the Premier League ever had a better Super Sunday undercard than this?

As Virgil van Dijk climbed to head home a 100th-minute winner at Everton on the back of an equally dramatic Aston Villa winner in an even wilder game against Sunderland, he ended the race for the Champions League places as Morgan Gibbs-White settled the relegation battle.

That’s maybe a bit much. We probably do have to wait for the formality of West Ham’s win at partied-out Crystal Palace on Monday night, with their winner presumably coming from a Brennan Johnson own goal on the basis that even when not directly involved Spurs are apparently currently doomed to the Spursiest possible outcome at all times.

Everton have always felt quite Spursy, of course. There are many similarities. Huge history. Massive in the 80s. Missed the boat when the money poured in in the 90s and been playing catch-up ever since. Constantly trying and failing to escape the shadow of larger, redder neighbours.

The only difference is that Everton know their way out of a relegation fight.

The fact their first season at the Hill Dickinson has never threatened to turn into another one of those will be cold comfort today, though, as Van Dijk’s late sickener pulled Liverpool away and clear of their local rivals and the rest of the chasing pack of overachievers.

The gap between Liverpool in fifth and a distinctly under-achieving Chelsea in sixth is now seven points and, while Arne Slot’s side remain distinctly fallible there is absolutely no sense that is a gap Chelsea are capable of clawing back.

If Everton are indeed as we now suspect the Spurs of the North, this was a game riddled with Evertonny (does that work? What about Toff… ee? No) moments.

The identity of Liverpool’s goalscorers, for one. Mo Salah in his final Merseyside Derby. Van Dijk in his? Doesn’t seem entirely impossible.

The winning goal coming in the 10th of 11 added minutes the bulk of which were there because of a lengthy stoppage for what seems like another serious injury for the luckless Jarrad Branthwaite was a double kick in the teeth.

And the opening goal wasn’t much or indeed any better for Everton, coming at the end of a rollercoaster two minutes beginning with Iliman Ndiaye thinking he’d given the Toffees the lead at one end only for VAR to intervene to say otherwise and ending with Mohamed Salah slotting the ball under Jordan Pickford at the other.

Even without the head-spinning emotional torment of all that, it was a nightmarish goal for Everton to concede, an entirely self-inflicted catastrophe as Dwight McNeil gave the ball away to allow Cody Gakpo to create the sort of chance that even this season’s Salah was not about to pass up.

Gakpo has been a source of enormous frustration for Liverpool fans this season, but this was a touch of class. His pass and Salah’s finish were both utterly sublime despite the generosity of their hosts in setting the attack in motion.

Everton were, unsurprisingly, rattled by all this. Having been the better side for the first 27 minutes, they were now dazed and vulnerable and urgently needed half-time. It says a fair bit about the loss of Liverpool’s killer instinct this season that they were unable to fully exploit the situation and finish the game off there and then.

Because Everton, inevitably, came out for the second half refocused and re-energised and deserved the equaliser Beto gave them 10 minutes in from a delicious Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall cross.

There were still another 45 minutes and more to play from that moment, it would turn out, and every one of them felt very Everton v Liverpool vibes. The Hill Dickinson is very much not Goodison, but this felt like so many Goodison derbies down the years.

Everton and Liverpool finishing all square at Goodison always felt like the most bankable draw Our League had to offer, and it looked like that would be one tradition carried over to Everton’s swanky new digs.

Van Dijk, right at the very last, had other ideas. Champions League? Sorted. Relegation? Settled. The title race…