Please, Everton... Just Do It!!!

Please, Everton... Just Do It!!!

The home Merseyside derby is always the first game most Evertonians — or, at least, this one — look for when the Premier League fixtures are announced.

This time around, there was of course something particularly special about it: The first Merseyside derby at Hill Dickinson Stadium.

The final derby at Goodison Park produced an iconic moment in the long, storied history of the fixture — James Tarkowski ensuring Everton snatched a 2-2 draw deep in stoppage time, and avoided defeat in their last clash with their fierce rivals at the Grand Old Lady.

At that stage last season, Everton were not exactly in a relegation scrap, though they were still looking over their shoulders. The game was all about pride, all about Liverpool not clinching all the points on their final visit to Goodison Park.

In the penultimate derby at Goodison, Everton prevailed 2-0 — goals from Jarrad Branthwaite and Dominic Calvert-Lewin all but securing safety for the Toffees towards the end of a tumultuous campaign. In the process, Everton all but ended Liverpool’s title hopes in Jurgen Klopp’s final season, too.

So, while the Anfield derbies of recent seasons have come with the usual frustrations and failings, Everton’s home games against the Reds have yielded positive memories. The pressure is now on to transfer that to Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Everton’s glittering new home got its lift-off moment last month: Chelsea were no match for the rampant Toffees, who were buoyed on by a fervent crowd.

Blue flares and a bus welcome will again take pride and place on the docks this weekend, and it’s safe to say that, for differing reasons, this home derby is just as big as the last two for Everton.

It is not Premier League safety or pride on the line. Instead, it is a derby thrust into the heat of a hugely congested tussle for European qualification.

I wrote previously how Everton were in for a decisive week. A trip to Brentford and then the derby.

Everton, just about, but deservedly, managed to avoid defeat in West London last weekend. It kept them on level pegging with Brentford, and just a point behind Chelsea. Wins for Bournemouth, Sunderland and Brighton, however, moved the Cherries, Black Cats and Seagulls to within touching distance of David Moyes’s men.

Liverpool’s win over Fulham was not an ideal result, of course, but did at least keep the Cottagers 3 points back from Everton. The Reds are, as it stands, 5 points clear and they occupy the final Champions League place.

After their 2-0 loss to Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday, sealing a 4-0 aggregate defeat, all that’s left for Arne Slot’s team is to ensure they finish in the top five and seal a return to Uefa’s flagship club competition for next term.

It has been a miserable season for Liverpool (it’s all relative, of course), but they do still have a squad packed with quality. Even so, this does feel like a huge, tantalising opportunity for Everton.

Hill Dickinson Stadium is starting to feel a bit like home, the Toffees have lost just one of their last five (with that defeat coming in agonising fashion away at Arsenal, the league leaders) and an unexpected return to Europe is firmly on the cards.

This game is not a must-win for Everton’s general European hopes — the state of the Premier League table dictates that other teams around them will drop points, and it is almost certain that the race will go down to the wire. But in the sense that it is a derby, and for the sake of momentum, winning on Sunday would surely inject enough confidence into Moyes’s men to feel they are in pole position to clinch continental qualification of some kind.

The issue of course is that Everton have been here before when it comes to derbies, although often those games, when opportunity really presented itself, have come at Anfield, and the Toffees have faltered.

This time has to be different. If it isn’t, it will be important to keep perspective — the race won’t be over and the season won’t be a failure. Yet a victory, however it comes, would really show that this Everton are a different beast.

Please, just somehow, get it done.

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