Everton 2, Hull 0: No fear for Merseyside derbies despite missing midfielder

Jan 12 2009 by Nick Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

And at the other end, the inspiration needed to provide the decisive goals is in full flow too, thanks mainly to Mikel Arteta’s overdue emergence. His two goals in the last league game at home to Sunderland came from free-kicks and he thrilled the Gwladys Street End again on Saturday with a 30-yard thunderbolt.

The fact that it came just seconds before half-time must have irked Brown, but there was no way he would have contemplated making his players stay on the pitch for one of his open-air team talks on this occasion – there was nothing anyone could have done about such a stunning strike.

But that should have made Brown realise how futile his post-match complaints were. Quite simply, Arteta scored because he had a shot at goal – something Hull failed to manage all afternoon.

Yes, some of Martin Atkinson’s bookings were a bit petty, but surely Brown can’t complain that he was biased. Why else would David Moyes’s assistant Steve Round join him in the queue outside the official’s door after the game?

Atkinson actually got the backing of Rafael Benitez during his tirade against Alex Ferguson on Saturday, and the Liverpool manager won’t have been too displeased by his zero tolerance approach to Fellaini’s careless but ultimately harmless high foot on Sam Ricketts less than two minutes into the second half.

In the Belgian’s first interview after he became Everton’s record signing he expressed his hope that referees in England would be more lenient to his style of play than they were in his homeland.

Becoming the first player to get into double figures in the yellow card count suggests his pleas fell on deaf ears and you can understand why Moyes didn’t risk him at Macclesfield.

The pursuit of three Premier League points presented the manager with a very different dilemma at the weekend, however, and perhaps left him in a bit of a no-win situation where Fellaini was concerned.

As terrible as Hull were, 2-0 is just not a comfortable enough lead to disrupt the system that had established it. Being wise after the event, City were so inept that Fellaini could have been replaced by Andy van der Meyde at the break and no-one would have questioned that as a gamble.

But as Arsenal and Liverpool have already surrendered five points to them on their own grounds this season, their ability to launch a comeback could not be under-estimated and half-time changes were not on the agenda.

Subsequent events have taken a bit of the gloss off the victory as Fellaini, who proved the value of his knack of getting on the end of crosses with the glancing header that opened the scoring, would have no doubt been fired up for another crack at Liverpool following the Champions League exit he suffered at their hands with Standard Liege earlier in the campaign.

And from Moyes’s point of view, he now has to contemplate the horror of playing a centre-forward in his line-up.