Why are the blues so bitter? Given how easy the match was for us, the prematch comments from this chap look fairly stupid now. I can't remember a derby that was so one sided.
Moyes and his negative defensive tactics played right into our hands. Rafa must have been rubbing his hands when he saw the five man midfield with the negative Neville and Fellaini in the centre. Gerrard and Alonso thrived against them even though they were outnumbered. The commentators on BBC 5live said that Everton looked and played like the away team rather than the home one. We utterly dominated possession.
Two heartening aspects from the match were the combination play from Keane and El Nino. His first goal was a thing of beauty. Keane hit a superb ball from the byline back into the centre and Torres was waiting to volley it home first time to break the deadlock. Great goal. Keane looked very happy with himself and Torres ran straight over to celbrate with him. Robbie knew he was the architect of an artistic move. He also played a crucial role in the second goal with a lovely pass for Dirk to get through on goal. Lucky for us, the tackle from Jagielka only sent it back towards Torres who was waiting to dispatch it for the winner. He scored a third which was incorrectly ruled out by Reily who is a shit ref.
Nice to see little Timmy Cahill get his marching orders too. He likes to act the hard man with brave and courageous tackles from behind. Fairly snide and sly player in my view.
Tony Barrett in the Echo is effusive in his praise of Stevie. "Bossed the midfield in a mature and intelligent display which proved beyond any doubt that he can play with head as well as heart." It was his best display of the season by far according to most observers.
Stevie says that Rafa has improved him as a player. He seems happier now with what position he plays on the pitch, wherever Rafa plays him. Andy Gray and Jamie Redknapp won't be happy to hear that. The Mirror have a picture special featuring everyone of the captain's 99 goals.
Once again there were disgraceful chants and songs from both sets of fans. The days of the friendly derby are well and truly gone. It's become poisonous and vile over the last decade or two. Sad situation.
PSV will be the next team to try to become the first one to beat us this season. I was unimpressed with them when we played them last year. Affaley looks like a good player but I don't remember them having much beyond him. I fully expect us to get the win on Wed night.
It appears that the Academy is getting a new addition. But rather than a spanish teen, it's Wrexham's head of youth development Steve Cooper. Will this mean the end of Elias or Hamberg who are currently in similar roles?
Could this young Brazilian centre back become the new Sami?

Stoke was a stinker of a game. When I read that it was 0-0 at half time, I had an idea that it would end that way. After seeing the highlights, I think that the Gerrard goal should have stood. But besides that, we should have been well capable of beating a team like Stoke at Anfield. We created the chances but didn't take any. Some of the players are looking tired, like Dirk and Javier, who didn't play here. Others are off form like Robbie and Torres, who hasn't got into his grove so far. It'll come. This was disappointing in so far as we could have gone top of the league and we need to be taking these opportunities. We drew far too many games last year and I don't want us to go down the same route this year. Teams will come and sit 10 behind the ball. We need to be cleverer about how we break them down, be it Albert and Ryan on the wings or Yossi on the edge of the box.

The sparkling spectre of the Carling Cup has rolled around again. Against Crewe, we played Sami and some of the youngsters. The average age was 22 if you removed our Finnish veteran. Unfortunately for Phil Degen, he broke a few ribs on his debut so will be out for a while. This could be an opportunity for local right back Steven Derby. We knew that he had a history of injury so this was him living up to his rep. Another player making his full debut was Diego Cavalieri. The goals came from an Agger free and a header by Lucas from a pennant cross. The bonus was that we got to rest some first teamers while giving some of the youngsters some valuable competitive experience.
Sat morning sees us visiting Goodison for the first Derby of the season. They'll be well up for it, as usual, and we'll need to match them. Moyes has a shite record in these games against Rafa so let's hope that continues. The senior players will have benefited from the midweek rest and should be full of energy. I think reds everywhere would be happy if this were the game that Robbie manages to get off the mark in this one.
Pepe reiterated his desire to stay with LFC. I hope that he doesn't move any time soon. He's a superb keeper and is improving each season. It's not by fluke that he's won the golden golden gloves three times in a row.

If you're feeling down after the Utd defeat then have a look at this. It tells the real story of what happened at Old Trafford. I wasn't too confident going into this unlike previous years, and thought that a draw was the best that we might have gotten. I thought that we looked nervous and a lot of our big players didn't perform. We probably would have been beaten anyway as Utd were the better team on the day but once we had 10 men it was a question of by how many.

My feelings on the sending off are that Bennett was a disgrace all match and was as blatant a homer as you're likely to see. That said, Javier should have stayed away from him after he had received the first booking and not risked getting a second. I can understand his fury as Torres booking was a disgrace given the kicking he was receiving. But Mascherano should have been mature, calm and professional enough to know that by getting involved and getting a second yellow he let the team down. Whatever slim chance we had went at that point. Rafa says that Masch knows he made a mistake. By not leaving the field he faces the prospect of an extended ban. But I think that if it had been Rooney, Terry, Neville or Ferdinand in the same situation they wouldn't have been sent off. How often have we seen them crowd and abuse the ref? Terry even stopped the ref from taking out his yellow card this season. Ferdinand was trying to talk the ref into booking our players on Sunday. Rooney berates refs every match he plays. How come they don't get sent off? There is an an awful lot of leverage allowed for England players. Gerrard can be guilty of it too, especially at Anfield but by and large I don't think that we crowd and abuse the ref en mass like some of our rivals. Maybe we should as it didn't seem to do Keane at Utd any harm.

David Pleat makes the point that it was long balls over the top which caused us problems. Rooney targeted Carragher knowing that he had the beating of him with pace and trickery. Carragher was poor and could have given away a peno for a challenge on Rooney. The ease at which the defence was being torn apart had a knock on effect on Pepe who missed some punches which was costly. His distribution, which is normally superb was poor on Sunday too. But I can't remember the last time he's had a poor game for us and he did make some super saves which prevented us from losing 5 or 6 nil.

According to Sky Sports Torres is unlikely to play for Spain tomorrow which is great news. Unfortunately, it means that he's a doubt for the derby. We're definitely going to need him against a very up for it Everton. They are in poor enough form having taken 1 point from 6 but they always raise their game for the derby. Given we've a superior goal difference and 2 more points, a draw mightn't be too bad a result. But if Torres is fit and the fact that they're missing a few players, we really should be able to win at home.

The BBC gossip page yesterday said that we will bid £12m for David Bentley in the summer. I think that it's a position that we have to look at in the summer as Dirk is only a stop gap there. Bentley is decent but I think that we can do better for a £12-15m winger. He'd give us a lot in terms of set pieces, crossing and goals but he doesn't have the pace that we need out wide. Another player linked to us on the forums is Gareth Barry of Aston Villa. I think that he's another good player but again we can do better. If we're buying him for left back then I think that he'd be an improvement. I hope that he's not being bought because Xabi wants to go back to Spain. It looks like David Villa wants to leave Valencia in the summer and we're one of the clubs being linked with him. I know that Rafa tried to sign him when he was still at Zaragosa and he is a top quality player. But I don't know if he would fit into our current 4-2-3-1 system. I think that we could spend the large amount of money that he would cost, on more pressing needs.

Everyone's favourite saga continues to rumble on and on and on. This article suggests Hicks is in financial trouble and DIC could reap the rewards. Let's hope it's accurate.