Everton’s defeat at Liverpool was a brutal reality check for Sean Dyche

If Sean Dyche got the Everton experience of old at Goodison Park in his first game as manager, he got the same again at Anfield.

Against Arsenal, he used his well-established playbook to prompt a gritty win, reviving the snarling Goodison beast of an atmosphere many feared was in danger of disappearing.

Perhaps it emboldened Dyche’s assertion that his new players were better than their league position suggests. He may have pause for thought on Tuesday morning.

As these predictable contests across Stanley Park tend to go for the Blues, this was a classic: same old, same old.

What else to really expect than a 16th Premier League defeat at Anfield, once the script started to feel so eerily familiar after 36 minutes?

James Tarkowski’s header hit the post and 13 seconds later, Mohamed Salah was scoring in front of the Kop. The visitors never really looked like recovering.

Dyche is unlikely to remember dates such as March 13, 2012, when Everton arrived at Anfield unbeaten in 10 matches to face a Liverpool side that had lost their previous three matches in the Premier League. “There’ll never be a better time to beat them”, was a widespread view among neutrals. Steven Gerrard scored a hat-trick and the hosts won 3-0.

Or fast forward past another 17 winless Merseyside derbies to January 2020 and the third round of the FA Cup. Jurgen Klopp made nine changes, sending out a team of youngsters, and Carlo Ancelotti seemed poised to capitalise. Everton’s full-strength team lost 1-0.

Each time, they have found a new way to fail, and so it went on Monday with a chastening defeat that, though not excessively damaging Everton’s hopes of Premier League survival, still emphasised the size of the task facing their new manager.

The drop-off in some elements of their performance from nine days earlier was alarming, particularly given the extra time Dyche had to work with the players at the training ground before this match. The muscle memory of what happens to them at Anfield seemed to kick in as soon as some inexplicably poor positioning from Jordan Pickford contributed to them going behind.

Until then, Everton had been in the game. The pressing and graft Dyche had instilled before the Arsenal win was again apparent. But from the moment Salah’s sucker punch left his boot, Everton did not seem to know how to respond and their passing deteriorated along with their belief.

Yes, it was a tall order for Everton to go there and win, despite Liverpool’s poor form, particularly without Dominic Calvert-Lewin in the side to lead the line as effectively as he did in the win over Mikel Arteta’s title contenders.

But Dyche must quickly realise the psychological baggage carried by much of this squad — especially at Liverpool — and in general. Even more so when things do not go their way.

Managing transitions and defending counter-attacks has been a repeated Achilles heel, and here they allowed a team that thrives on such passages of play to strike decisively twice.

Conor Coady bemoaned that failing in his post-match interview, and it was difficult to disagree with him. His team-mates had been too diffident as Liverpool scored both goals, with nobody willing to risk a booking with a cynical foul at the right moment.

There was nowhere near enough of the muscularity or determination that undid Arsenal either; witness Alex Iwobi losing possession meekly to an 18-year-old, Stefan Bajcetic (who was excellent), before Liverpool’s second.

Then there was their attacking offering. One shot on target is the stark bottom line of an evening when the paucity of options available after a disastrous January transfer window by Everton was underlined.

Without Calvert-Lewin, who Dyche later said may not be fit for Saturday’s game against Leeds either, the manager opted to use a forward recalled on loan from Championship side Sunderland in December. The decision to bring back Ellis Simms smacked of desperation from previous manager Frank Lampard — a desire simply to add a body to a weak forward line. Simms’ goals in the second tier suggest a player with talent, but that Dyche picked him ahead of £15million ($18.2m) summer signing Neal Maupay seemed to say a lot.

In the end, it was a gamble that failed, as the 22-year-old fluffed a good chance to give his side the lead and spent most of his hour on the periphery, losing out to Joe Gomez.

He was not alone in providing little threat and had to toil in isolation on the whole. The lack of midfield creativity hurt Everton too, typified by the sight of Dwight McNeil — so impressive against Arsenal — overhitting long balls into touch, or Seamus Coleman overlapping and swinging a cross over the heads of every team-mate in the area.

On this evidence, it is no surprise that Everton are the top flight’s lowest scorers (16 goals, one behind Wolverhampton Wanderers and Nottingham Forest). Even when a chance to stage a late rally fell to substitute Tom Davies, he wasted it.

“There are good players here,” he said in his first press conference as Everton manager. “They may not have shown it, but we need to remind ourselves of the good players here. We’ve got to polish them up a bit.”

It seems Dyche will have an awful lot of polishing to do in the coming weeks.

“The details are forever important in football,” he concluded on Tuesday. “We got them right last weekend, we didn’t get them right tonight. It was obvious. Too many details went against us in both boxes.

“The next layer is working with the players and defining the things we’ve got to do better. We’ve got to fast-track everything we’re trying to achieve into the players.

“They’ve been a very good group to work with so far. I expect that to continue.”

With their only dependable striker physically compromised and a team prone to mental weakness, Dyche will have to dig deep to get enough details right quickly enough.

There will be other games far more important to their survival hopes, but this latest derby humbling was yet another dose of painful perspective. Dyche has got his work cut out.

(Top photo: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)