The Merseyside Derby (Feat. Stephen Warnock)

Liverpool face Everton at Goodison Park fresh off another Premier League shake-up.

It’s one of the great old rivalries of English football, and Liverpool are flying coming into this one—or at least they were. Top of the league and the new-look Champions League table, the Reds did have a blip in midweek with that 3-3 draw at St. James’ Park. Everton are reeling this season as usual, but they did smash Wolves 4-0 on Wednesday. Can they take heart from that and find a way to disrupt Arne Slot’s title-chasers to snatch the points for themselves?

Joining us to preview this one is Stephen Warnock, an analyst and co-commentator for the Premier League on NBC. An accomplished left back at England’s top level, he started his career in the Liverpool academy and broke through into the first team, so he’s walked out on that pitch at Goodison Park for this very fixture:

———————————

Or check it out on APPLE PODCASTS🍎

———————————

4 matches worth watching, 4 stories worth reading, and 2 items of football gear worth snatching…..

MATCHES

ATALANTA vs MILAN

Fri @ 2:45pm ET, 7:45pm GMT

The hosts have turned Europa League triumph in May (over previously invincible Bayer Leverkusen) into a formidable campaign this term. They’re fifth in the new-look Champions League table and second in Serie A, just one point behind Napoli. Mateo Retegui is top scorer in the division with 12 goals and three assists in 14 matches, and he’ll look to continue his lethal form against one of the giants of the Italian game. Milan will make the 50-minute journey northeast in serious need of a result: they’re seventh in the table, six points off the Top Four and six points off Empoli in 10th. Christian Pulisic & Co. are at a crossroads.

CRYSTAL PALACE vs MAN CITY

Sat @ 10am ET, 3pm GMT

They’re not quite Tottenham, but Palace have milder bogey-team vibes for City. The Eagles have taken at least a point in three of their last six meetings with Pep Guardiola’s side, and after a difficult start to this campaign, Oli Glasner can point to just one loss in their last six for signs of progress. They’re still 17th, however, and need to get themselves away from the drop zone. City had a disastrous six-game run of their own coming into this week, but a midweek dismantling of Nottingham Forest will go some way towards restoring the champions’ belief. Now they have to prove the ship is truly steadied with three points at Selhurst Park.

JUVENTUS vs BOLOGNA

Sat @ 12pm ET, 5pm GMT

The Thiago Motta Derby. Bologna are headed up to Torino for a reunion with the manager who took them back to the European Cup—now d.b.a. the Champions League—after a 60-year absence. The Brazitalian (he represented both nations as a player) hasn’t exactly set the world alight in his distinguished new digs: the Old Lady are sixth in Serie A, six points off the top, and right now they’re just trying to keep pace with the tight pack of Atalanta, Inter, Fiorentina, and Lazio. Bologna would like to get into that pack, and victory here would start to put them back in the conversation for a European place.

TOTTENHAM vs CHELSEA

Sun @ 11:30am ET, 4:30pm GMT

This here’s a London derby that rarely disappoints, even on the perfunctory post-match managerial handshake. Chelsea have had the edge in recent times, winning eight of the last 11 league meetings, but it’s rarely one-way traffic across the 90 minutes and Tottenham have taken points in two of the last four matches. They certainly need to compete here: defeat to Bournemouth in midweek saw Spurs sink below their opponents in that one to 10th in the table.

Long gone are the heady days of Ange Postecoglou’s first half-season. Even the bashing of Manchester City a fortnight ago feels like ancient history. The Australian is under pressure to be sure, though the top half is tightly packed this term and they’re still just three points back from Brighton in fifth.

All that drama suggests this one could be a cracker, and so does the form book: this young Chelsea team have played their way into second by bashing in the goals, but Tottenham have scored just three fewer.

🇺🇸BONUS: LA GALAXY vs NY RED BULLS

Sat @ 4pm ET, 9pm GMT

It feels like a lifetime ago that I spoke to Riqui Puig at the beginning of this MLS season. The ex-Barcelona starlet was clear-eyed about the challenge ahead after the Galaxy’s poor campaign the year prior, when they finished second to last in the Western Conference. Look at them now: they’re in the MLS Cup final, though they’ll have to go without Riqui. He tore his ACL in the semifinal against the Seattle Sounders, though that didn’t stop him from assisting the winner to send them through to the final. New York will be glad he’s not around to dissect their very Red Bullian high press and spark some Galactic counterattacks.

———————————

READS

⚽︎ Perhaps no player has lost more (professionally) in one match than Loris Karius, and the former Liverpool goalkeeper spoke to SPORTbible at the end of last month about how he’s never really recovered from “that night in Kyiv.”

⚽︎ The Athletic has a look at how rainbow initiatives in the Premier League became controversial. When someone says players are “standing up for what they believe in” by refusing to wear an armband or a warmup jacket, it’s worth asking: What, exactly, do they believe in?

⚽︎ Sport in Spain tells us Barcelona are pulling another “lever” to get good with the football financial authorities, this time selling VIP seats good for the next 20 years that will bring in around €200 million immediately.

⚽︎ OK, less of a read, but there’s an astonishing situation in the Brasileirão: Fluminense, who won the 2023 Copa Libertadores—the South American Champions League—are in danger of relegation. So are Atlético Mineiro, who contested the 2024 Libertadores final a few days ago! If one of them falls through the trap door, they’d join Santos, the club of Pelé and Neymar, in Brazil’s Serie B.

———————————

GEAR

👕 A.C. Milan dropped a 125th anniversary kit this week and it is serious business. We love the thick old-school stripes, the button-up front, the nod to the club’s first name when English expat Herbert Kilpin founded it in 1899. They won their first title two years later.

👕 Adidas is out with some brand-new Predators that channel the sleek rectangularity that’s always defined these boots and signaled to all that the wearer is going to absolutely sledgehammer the ball with measured technique.⚽︎