Fan Preview: Liverpool vs Everton

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Stuart Purcell pens his thoughts ahead of tonights Merseyside Derby.

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All football fans know that one day is ranked higher than all others and that’s derby day, the only thing better than derby day is your team making it to Wembley. For us Evertonians those days have arrived in the same week, it’s like your birthday is three days before Christmas. Although with the season we’ve been having its difficult to get as excited as usual for our favourite game of the season, because in the back of our minds we’ll be thinking of the huge cup semi-final on Saturday. But luckily us nervy lot don’t have to play in both these games, it’s going to be down to Bobby to get the blues in the right frame of mind for Wednesday night’s clash with that lot across the park.

Every lazy pundit will tell you that form goes out the window in the derby and even though we’ve heard it all before it’s what we need. I can’t think of a better time for the players to walk out onto the pitch and not have to think about previous results from this season, or for that matter anything else that’s going on. I’ve never been to a derby where either set of fans have let goings on at the club or bad form stop them getting 100% behind their team and creating an incredible atmosphere. The most important team talk on Wednesday will not come from Bobby, it will come from the thousands of Evertonians singing their hearts out and getting behind their team before the two biggest games of the season.

For those who still want to talk about form going into this game I’ll try and sum this one up as quickly as I can, because it doesn’t make nice reading. Ours has been awful, pretty much all season and under the management annoyingly likable Klopp, there’s has been very good. To throw some stats in there supporting this Liverpool have won four of their last six Premier League matches, losing one and well we lost three and won none. So that’s enough of stats because it’s just going to make everyone depressed and that is not what we want on such a big week of games. Although one last one I will throw in that might put a smile back on your face is that Rom has scored five goals in his last seven against the kopites and he is definitely due a goal or two isn’t he?

With a few injuries in the side it could be an another opportunity for youngster Callum Connolly to step into the right back position and maybe make a name for himself amongst the Everton fans. If fit Lukaku, Lennon and Barkley will surely go straight back into the starting eleven but if not 100% then I can see them being saved for Saturday.  As I write this I feel quite calm but I know as soon as I finish work on Wednesday that the derby day nerves will start and everything else will be forgotten about. To be annoyingly preachy for a second I hope that the same goes for all the travelling Evertonians and that this week we forget everything else and just get behind the blues and can beat the red shite of Merseyside before we take on the red shite of Manchester.

I predict an absolute goal fest and as I’m forever an optimist I’m going for the blues to get a late winner

Kopites 2 Everton 3