It might not seem like it, but I really don’t like talking about referees. If I could get three wishes from a genie, once I’d wished for unlimited money and the ability for my wife and I to be transported anywhere simply by thinking about it, the third wish would be referees to just do their jobs and referee the game in front of them. Any time you mention referees, you will inevitably get someone saying something like ‘you can’t blame the referee, we should’ve had enough to win’. It’s as though they think the person in the middle is irrelevant to how the game will pan out, when in reality they can have a huge influence on a match’s outcome. They don’t even need to send players off or give dubious penalties, with Michael Oliver’s performance last night being a really good example of how a referee can have a clear influence on the outcome of a game by doing the little things genuinely badly.
Imho, Michael Oliver used to be the best referee by a mile.
Then he went on his travels to the oily boys & came back changed.
The #FA referees are incompetent & corrupt to the point of absurdity.
The @FA_PGMOL are overseeing rampant levels of corruption.
Not fit for purpose.
— smtm_lfc1975 (@smtm_lfc1975) February 13, 2025
Stats can never tell the full story, but the Reds boasted 63.2% possession and yet were found guilty of committing 20 fouls compared to Everton’s nine. That is, frankly, bonkers. Anyone who watched the game without Red or Blue-tinted glasses on would surely tell you that he was blowing up for even the slightest offence by Liverpool players whilst ignoring even the harshest ones by Evertonians. For their goal, he gave them a free-kick for a dive; not the most egregious error and the sort of thing that referees do all the time, but frustrating nevertheless. When Idrissa Gueye committed a clear bookable offence, he gave the advantage instead of sending him off. Towards the end of the game, with just seconds left on the clock, he allowed them to play on well past when we should’ve heard the full-time whistle and they eventually got the goal he was no doubt craving. It was a disgraceful refereeing performance.
We Need to Keep Cool Heads
Whilst the draw was unquestionably frustrating, not only because the full-time whistle should’ve blown and Ibrahima Konaté appeared to be fouled in the box but also because it was in our own hands, it actually extends our lead at the top of the Premier League table. That is a fact that the Evertonians who decided to invade the pitch no doubt forgot in the heat of the moment. We have a cushion in place that will allow us to drop points in other games, whilst Arsenal have to be practically perfect in order to catch us. That doesn’t mean that that can’t happen. I’ve been around for long enough to have seen teams blow leads of more than seven points. Yet it is a comfortable cushion for a team that is playing as well as we have been all season, with the crucial thing now being that we need to maintain calm heads over the next few days in the build-up to a vital period.
liverpool and arsenal’s next 5 premier league fixtures. pic.twitter.com/cN0CoQHJfY
— Capitano🌹 (@redRiveraa) February 13, 2025
The problem with looking at the fixtures of your team and the team that you want to drop points is that you can see monsters behind every game that you’ve got to play whilst the other side’s games look like the easiest in the world. In truth, I genuinely do expect Arsenal to win all three of their next few games, but they are a team that has dropped points at unexpected times all season. Even if we dropped four in our next four games and they’re perfect in theirs, we’ll still be three points in front of them. The key thing is for no one, certainly not the manager or his players, to lose their heads and begin to panic. One of the biggest issues with last night is that we didn’t play football. We got dragged down to their level and got involved in far too many battles. For the rest of the campaign we need to be cool, calm and collected and that is how we will end up winning the Premier League.
Performances Need to be Better
Everton had a clear game plan last night and it was the referee’s job not to let them get away with it. Instead, Michael Oliver was buying everything they were selling, so Liverpool needed to rise above it. One of my biggest problems with the Reds for a long time is that we aren’t smart enough around referees. What I mean by that is that we need to realise that the likes of Oliver, Paul Tierney and Andy Madely isn’t going to give us free-kicks for the same things they award the opposition them, so stop asking and get on with it. You know they’re going to blow up for a foul any time an opposition player goes down, so stop giving them the opportunity to. Having said that, I don’t think we played well in general last night. I think you can count on one hand the players that coped with what Everton were trying to do, with far too many of our players having an off day and trying to win the physical battle.
I don’t watch men’s football anymore but the ending to that Merseyside Derby was BRILLIANT.
it was a nice throwback to the old days when players from rival clubs proper hated each other, instead of like it is today where they are all mates.
— Gibran Mohamed (@jibbeyxd.bsky.social) 13 February 2025 at 11:16
It is frustrating that that happened, but it isn’t exactly unusual in a derby for heads to go. It is the old cliché that the form book goes out of the window for a derby, but there is a degree of truth to that. You only need to look at our league positions in recent years, their league positions over the same period and view how many derbies at Goodison Park we’ve won to know that. Even so, when it went 2-1 I expected us to hold on and they had very little to threaten us. Oliver should’ve awarded us a free-kick when Mo Salah was wiped out, but instead he played on and we failed to deal with what was a very obvious threat. I thought we played poorly overall, even allowing for one of the worst refereeing performances I can remember in recent times, which is something that will need to change if we’re to win the title. Wolves are the next on the list, so we need to bounce back straight away with a win there to prove we’re still on the right track.
