5 NOVEMBER 1994, Page 71

SPECTATOR SPORT

Scouse rivalry

Frank Keating

A COUPLE of days before the football season began — cricket was still in full bloom — I was ordered to skip the Oval and get up to the north-west for a day to rake over that occasional, but always handy chestnut, namely, Balance of Power Shifts on Merseyside: Liverpool FC on downslide towards doldrums, Everton primed for glis- tening new era.

These stories write themselves, as fol- lows: having sorted out last season's sham- bles, everything at Everton's Goodison Park was tickety-boo and the team was bound to be a force in the land; while, high- er up the hill across Stanley Park, at Anfield, the once mighty Reds of Liverpool were in a heap of trouble, with overpaid, ageing stars who couldn't raise a canter, and stony broke directors unable to muster a bean for new blood. Relegation by Easter for sure. Or a thousand words to that effect .

One day after these prognostications of my utter certitude made the public prints, Liverpool merrily doled out £3.5 million for a defender from Coventry City. A further day, and the Reds won their first match by five clear goals. And the Blues got stuffed.

Since when, Liverpool have lolloped along all comfy, tucked in warm and wait- ing for the yapping front-runners to be burned off by the frosts of midwinter. And Everton, my banker bet for the bright lights, have yet to win a game. A draw last Saturday at least levelled them on points with a compass, but still 20 behind Liver- pool. Everton's record reads P12, WO, L.8, D4, goals for 8, against 24.

Everton's poor fraught manager, a for- mer goalkeeper called Mike Smith, sits at the touchline as pasty and hollow-cheeked as Yorick. To be sure, the latest of the stream of jokes emanating from Anfield is that Smith received a letter last week from the Society of Undertakers complaining that, while they can live with DIY coffins, they draw the line at people digging their own graves.

After Saturday's out-of-the-blue draw against Arsenal on Saturday, Smith himself was drawn to pick up the metaphor. 'Ever- ton's feet might be in the grave,' he said, `but we're not dead yet.' Getting there, but not as morbidly classic a line as that of one of Smith's predecessors at Goodison a decade or so ago. Gordon Lee, a nice man, was another cadaverous-faced wortypot who put his heart and soul into the job, but was almost permanently panting behind Liverpool's slipstream. Announced Gor- don, after losing another relegation four- pointer: 'In football, at the end of the day, you must keep battling, and even when you're dead you must never allow yourself just to lie down and be buried.'

In his programme notes one Saturday, Gordon took umbrage at receiving com- plaints from supporters demanding that his dowdy team might be improved by the sign- ing of some exciting big names and mazy dribblers. 'But this game's not all about stars and flair,' he wrote. 'As far as I'm con- cerned stars are those little things that glimmer in the sky, and flairs are the things tailors stick on the end of your trouser- legs.'

About once a decade Everton conjure a spurt and show Liverpool what for. Say, every ten seasons. It will not be this one. As the immortal Bill Shankly's fervent boast had it, 'There's only two decent teams on Merseyside — Liverpool and Liverpool Reserves.'