Cards, jibes, controversy; just another derby day

WHAT’S Spanish for “get out of jail” or “daylight robbery”? While my Mancunian colleague opens his bumper book of quips let’s crack on. Even by derby standards, where sanity seldom surfaces, Saturday was weird.

Abandoning previous attempts to twinkle-toe through the Goodison minefield Rafa packed his team with sloggers: two holding midfielders, two workaholic ‘forwards’.

All fine and dandy once you avoid silly mistakes like, say, putting the ball in your own net. The best laid plans etc.

Watching Sami is like footage of an old lion in one of those crummy Eastern European zoos. It breaks your heart and if Everton weren’t so chronically devoid of creativity and adventure it could have been a lot worse. One shot on target, and we did that.

The atmosphere was what bigoted outsiders expect of us, a glutinous mix of savagery and sentiment. A half-time plea to fight gun crime in the city was met with warm applause but didn’t stop blues calling us “murderers” and reds screaming “Munich” at Neville. Classy.

Cleaner fun was to be had at the expense of Everton’s supermarket benefactors and a move to a new stadium outside the city limits. They’ve made so much pernicious use of their Scouserdom over the years that there was little comeback to our taunts.

The second half exploded with the sort of mayhem only football provides. We’d spent the first half complaining about Lescott fouling Finnan, and how even a peripheral England figure gets away with anything.

Then our own untouchable strode forward and turned the whole afternoon on its head.

It looked a penalty all right but a theatrical flourish never hurts. Too much was made of Clattenburg’s yellow/red dilemma, much as it was when Styles was similarly ‘confused’ with Essien back in August.

Both men eventually made the right decision, a fact largely ignored in the rush to skewer officials on the technology spit.

“Gerrard told him to send Hibbert off”. Read that sentence aloud and realise the enormity of the accusation being made.

At 1-1 against 10 men there was a sudden feeling we could win this game. Hardly a ‘Eureka!” moment but it certainly hadn’t been there for the preceding 47 minutes. Should the disappearance of Tony Hibbert really instigate such a turnaround? Even then Rafa kept his workers on the pitch whilst discovering belatedly he was allowed to replace his captain.

We’ve seen numerous games where such action was warranted. This wasn’t one of them, but it gave a frisson to an already frenetic fixture.

“If we don’t win now he’ll be absolutely slaughtered” was the general consensus around me, although not couched in such delicate phrases. As the woeful Sissoko finally made way for Pennant in the 88th minute it seemed late and desperate. It was more than convenient that Gerrard’s replacement eventually provided another key moment and Rafa broke with tradition to step foot on the turf to congratulate the players.

Given the firestorm that would have greeted a draw he was perhaps entitled to savour the moment but it was one more oddity to pile on top of the others.

There was something inevitable about the aftermath, ceaseless blue complaint about decisions. They might have a case this time around but the boys have cried wolf so often it’s hard to take them seriously.

In 2006, we had Gerrard sent off after 10 minutes. We won 3-1. One of the managers went to the press to complain about the referee. He wasn’t Spanish.

Moyes was in full neck-vein-popping mode as usual, listing at least five conspiracies and describing Kuyt’s misguided leap as “four feet off the floor”. What is this, The Matrix? His comments about Clattenburg were scandalous. Pipe down man, you’re pathetic. It’s not your job to make Neil Warnock look good.

But it’s a smokescreen Everton have hidden behind for the vast majority of the last four decades. They’ll never change.

I doubt Carragher had sufficient energy left to drag down a lump like Lescott but since he also sprinted 70 yards to the away end in five seconds flat, I might be wrong there! We had the points, the blues had faces like thunder and were preparing for their annual communal bleat.

Just another derby day.