It was almost as if Diego Simeone had rocked up at Anfield on Sunday afternoon. The tactics on show from Everton is what Lampard has learned from Jose Mourinho at Chelsea: feigning injury and slowing down the play at every opportunity. They are anti-football tactics, Mourinho has done it and Simeone does it, but it’s just whether the Everton faithful will be happy to watch that.
You don’t mind teams defending, but I’m thinking about the likes of Alan Ball, Colin Harvey and Howard Kendall and all the great midfielders Everton have had over the years. Thiago made more passes than the entire Everton team, which is absolutely incredible. Liverpool had 85 per cent possession, that’s never happened in the derby before. Sam Allardyce got a draw a few years ago and even he managed more than that.
It was a bit of a shock to see Everton playing that way but if you want to go to those depths to get a point, they’re entitled to do it. That’s how desperate Lampard was and he saw that as his best chance of getting a point at Anfield. I’m just glad football won in the end.
Richarlison was the main culprit for trying to con the referee, but he does it all the time. Even the Evertonians I know are sick and tired of it themselves – he frustrates them as much as everyone else. Richarlison has got so much talent, just like Anthony Gordon, and there’s no need for the way they act on the pitch.
Gordon is a local lad, and I love local players making it at first-team level, but he has got to get those theatrics out of his game. He is their best player by a mile and has got so much going for him. For me, the challenge involving him and Matip was not a penalty. There wasn’t enough in it; Gordon felt a bit of contact and went down. He did it in the first half too and was correctly booed for doing so. If he didn’t do that in the first half, the referee may have had a look at it on VAR.
Lampard then claimed after the match that if it was Mohamed Salah who had gone down, he would have been awarded a penalty. But that is simply not true. If Lampard had watched back a number of our games, he would see how many times Salah has been ignored in incidents similar to that. For us to get a penalty with Salah, he has got to be properly clattered. I thought the referee had an OK game, it was a difficult one to manage because of Everton’s antics. He got the main decisions right.
Frank Lampard has done Everton absolutely no favours with that performance, that’s for sure. The team only portrays him on the pitch and it was very much the Chelsea way on Sunday afternoon. Chelsea did that time and time again when Frank and John Terry were together, Terry used to go down in the box despite the fact he’s a big, strong centre-back. Lampard has picked all the tactics Mourinho used and it’s not the fans or the players’ fault they had to do what the manager tells them.
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