Liverpool 1 Everton 1

Veni, vidi, trahere.

Sam Allardyce’s first Merseyside derby ended in a 1-1 draw, thanks to a late penalty from Wayne Rooney that almost caused Jurgen Klopp to spit out his new teeth and rip the This is Anfield doormat off his frazzled bonce.

There were raised eyebrows when Marbella’s finest decreed that Everton would play four-four-fucking-two, and but for the hubris of his opposite number – who saw fit to leave Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino, Emre Can and Georginio Wijnaldum on the bench ahead of a visit from West Brom on Wednesday – a ragtag band of defenders, thrown together through a combination of injury and appalling recruitment, could well have been served a hiding of Roberto Martinez proportions. Fortunately, though, the tricky Reds had decidedly bigger fish to fry, and so a backline comprised of Jonjoe Kenny, Ashley Williams, Mason Holgate and Cuco Martina was enough to restrict the scoreline to a point where the Blues were only a moment of fortune or quality away from being right back in the match.

A midfield four of Rooney, Tom Davies, Idrissa Gana Gueye and Gylfi Sigurdsson were predictably overran from the get-go, leaving Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Oumar Niasse to feed off scraps up front. According to those nerds at Opta, Everton had a lower share of the ball (21%) than they'd managed in any other Premier League game since records began in 2003/04 – suggesting that rather than bleat about penalties that even Mark Clattenburg would struggle to wave away, Klopp and his minions would be better served asking why they weren’t out of sight after an opening 45 minutes which saw Big Sam’s merry mob give a performance befitting a League Two team hoping to steal an FA Cup replay (more on that in January).

With little to suggest that the defensive personnel had, as Mick Foley would say, the intestinal fortitude to withstand a prolonged siege, there was more than a touch of the inevitable about Mohamed Salah’s quite sublime strike on 42 minutes. The Egyptian broke the deadlock – and, we all assumed, the floodgates – as he took the ball down under what first appeared to be pressure from Martina, only for it to transpire that Ronald Koeman had detonated his compatriot’s internal explosives, causing him to collapse in on himself like Tower 7. Salah then somehow managed to momentarily freeze Gana in time, before curling a peach of a shot around Williams and well beyond the reach of Jordan Pickford. The game should have been dead and buried minutes later when Sadio Mane found himself with a clear run on goal and both Dominic Solanke and Salah free to tap into a virtually empty net, but the Senegalese forward, who scored in both meetings last season, contrived to screw and awful shot past the far post.

Liverpool continued to dominate possession in the second half, but as time wore on, Everton started to look more comfortable in what was an unashamedly ultra-defensive shape, to the point where you felt that they were now confident in their ability to repel attacks from their base on the 18-yard line. Were it any other team in any other game, you would have suspected that the hosts could end up ruing the chances they had spurned earlier on; especially when Klopp doubled down on his contemptuous approach by withdrawing top-scorer Salah in the 67^th minute, despite his team’s narrow advantage, and the fact that they were being largely restricted to half-chances and efforts from outside the box. As it happened, not even an excruciatingly poor record on this ground was enough to stop that familiar pattern from playing out in Everton’s favour.

The plaudits will rightly go to the defence, with Kenny in particular giving a fantastic performance, but it was a rare moment of quality that truly earned the point. Rooney, who was much more useful following half-time changes that allowed him to move inside, gathered the ball out on the right-wing, near the halfway line, and picked out Calvert-Lewin with a perfectly-weighted, raking pass that dropped just over the head of the last defender, Dejan Lovren. The young striker showed tremendous skill and composure to watch the ball onto his thigh, and then move in behind the Croatian lump, who took it upon himself to shove his opponent with the impudence of someone facing a team that has been awarded but a single penalty at Anfield since the fall of well-known red Adolf Hitler.

Unfortunately for Lovren (and Hitler’s ghost), big Craig Pawson was there to chew bubblegum and give stonewall penalties – and he was all out of bubblegum. The whistle was blown, and in the absence of Leighton Baines it was Rooney who took responsibility and smashed his spot kick hard and high up the middle. Klopp responded by finally sending on Coutinho, but it proved to be too little, too late, as a rear-guard boosted by the addition of Phil Jagielka managed to hold out for an extremely unexpected point. It was initially insulting when the Sky commentator claimed that a draw would represent bragging rights for little Everton, but then it turned out that he was correct, as the freezing Toffees were warmed by the greatest prize of all: Klopp having another one of his Basil Fawlty meltdowns after someone didn’t let him win.

What a tit.