I have never seen a mood change inside a football stadium so quickly.
It was December 2016 and the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park deserved to end in a goalless draw.
Ragnar Klavan, Liverpool’s unheralded Estonian defender, was named man of the match by the BBC broadcasters covering the game, and that reflected everything you really needed to know about the way it had been.
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Except, Liverpool somehow won.
The chances of that happening increased, I think, when it was announced across the public address system there would be seven minutes of added time.
The reaction to that development involved an enormous groan, which seemed to come from the bowels of the stadium. Evertonians would have probably settled for a point but they now knew there was still enough time for Liverpool to win. And Liverpudlians knew it as well.
A sense of inevitability took over. A nervous electricity rippled through the old ground and it felt like something extraordinary was about to happen.
Everton’s players became hesitant. Liverpool’s were encouraged.
Suddenly, Sadio Mane pounced. And that, as they say, was that.
Now, some Evertonians tell me there is an irresistible malevolent force that powers Liverpool FC in these moments.
There have, after all, been a fair few of them.
Everton tended to be more convincing in derby matches throughout the 1990s, so the spell began (or returned, depending on how long your memory is) when Gary McAllister planted a 40-yard free kick (having gained an advantage by edging the dead ball closer to goal than it should have been) past Paul Gerrard for a last-minute winner in 2001.
With that, Liverpool went from being a team who got bullied out of derbies to one you’d heavily back to win them.
Yes, perhaps a year earlier Everton would have won a 0-0 at Goodison had Sander Westerveld’s clearance, which rebounded off Don Hutchison’s back before bouncing into the net, been allowed to stand.
Yes, perhaps Everton should have been awarded a penalty when Jamie Carragher wrestled Joleon Lescott at a corner in 2007 and, yes, Dirk Kuyt ought to have been sent off in that same game.
Yes, Jack Rodwell should not have got an early red card in 2011; yes, maybe, Luis Suarez could have gone the same way as Rodwell for a lunge on Sylvain Distin the following year; and no, I still cannot explain what the hell Jordan Pickford was doing when he allowed Divock Origi to score a winner with pretty much the last touch in 2018.
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Maybe there are other decisions and freak occurrences that have helped Liverpool (feel free to list them in the comments) but in the interest of some balance, Liverpudlians could remind them that Everton should not have been awarded a throw-in before Kevin Campbell scored the winner in their last Anfield victory in 1999.
Seventeen years later, Ross Barkley should have been sent off in the aforementioned fixture at Goodison (even Everton’s manager Ronald Koeman later agreed he was fortunate to stay on). Meanwhile, in 2012, Suarez (though, yes, it is debatable whether he should have still been on the pitch, as mentioned above) was denied a late winner after he was incorrectly ruled offside.
Though some will say rules are rules, and remind that implausibly in a football police state defined by cameras some grey areas around the theme of jurisdiction remain, it still seems incredible Pickford was not dismissed for his two-footed tackle on Virgil van Dijk in the early stages of the reverse fixture in October; a game where Sadio Mane’s hand was also judged to be relevant in a VAR call that prevented Jordan Henderson from securing three away points in stoppage time.
That was, of course, the second Merseyside derby to be played in an empty stadium because of the pandemic.
While the first one last June perhaps helped Everton rather than Liverpool because they were able to execute a more patient game than would have been acceptable to a Goodison audience which in normal circumstances tends to feed off a quicker, sometimes speculative approach (a passive Liverpool were there for the taking that day in their first post-lockdown match), there is an argument which says Everton did not feel the full benefit of Van Dijk’s absence four months later because a raucous crowd was not there to pounce on the unexpected drama in front of them and crank up the pressure on a defence that had conceded seven goals to Aston Villa in their previous game.
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Some of these events have not been a consequence of a pressurised atmosphere but some of them undoubtedly are.
Defining this sort of measurement, I would say, is a challenge in a game where conversations are now so often concluded by the delivery of data.
For example, I sometimes wonder how Liverpool beat Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final second leg in May 2005 and despite the tactics of Rafa Benitez and inspiration of Steven Gerrard, I arrive at the conclusion neither prove to be as influential without the setting of Anfield and the pandemonium inside it. We will never know for certain, indeed, how much of this impacted on the linesman who in the early mayhem thought Luis Garcia’s flick had crossed the line (Honestly? I don’t think it did – I think he panicked).
The idea that the lack of crowds in the pandemic has affected each club equally is absurd because it forgets history and ignores culture (as well as momentum at the point where leagues were suspended). There are times when the atmosphere at a full-to-capacity Anfield or Goodison is a let-down. Yet entrenched terrace psyches remain – and standardly, though they are changeable in a way that cannot be qualified exactly all of the time, they can prove to be as influential any player’s skill or any manager’s decisions.
Just as the memories of a fanbase mean they have the capacity to lift a team to victory, they also possess the potential to emasculate that pursuit.
It is almost certain that just as Daniel Sturridge’s 89th-minute equaliser for Liverpool in 2013 was fresh in the minds of Evertonians when the scoreboard went up signalling another seven minutes of play three years later, Liverpudlians have gained confidence through the timing of such experiences and have subsequently believed again in the impossible. That they had given up before Pickford’s intervention in 2018 only reinforced what sometimes might seem an evangelical certainty about the future.
Given such context, as well as the form and the narrow separation of status between both teams in the table, the chances of an Everton victory on Saturday evening increases. There are lots of facts and figures about their struggles in this fixture but the one that sums what has happened this century best relates to the mere 36 minutes they have spent in the lead at Anfield in the Premier League since the year 2000.
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Without being reminded of that inside an empty arena where Liverpool have recently struggled themselves, it is surely Everton’s greatest opportunity yet to end an unwanted period of history.
Of course, this was also said 13 months ago when Jurgen Klopp fielded a team of kids against them in the FA Cup but still won thanks to a goal that launched Curtis Jones’ career.
On that occasion, the shift in expectation did not suit Everton and when they missed a series of first-half chances, the home crowd seized upon it and mention of the past was never far away.
(Top photo: Peter Byrne – Pool/Getty Images)