“Let’s hope it’s not the hope that kills us.”

- Kev the Rat

It was this past Saturday that Carlo Ancelotti’s Everton managed what no other Everton team had in 22 years: they won a Merseyside derby at Anfield.

When the Toffees last won an away at Liverpool in 1999, I was wandering the streets of Boston in an undergraduate haze: a dreadlocked scamp cloaked in torn sweaters and floppy pants. It’s a painful visual. It was a very long time ago.

And it’s a monument worth exploring. This is a surprising result. Everton just don’t win at Anfield very often. And in the hours after the game, while the narrative wrapped mostly around all that is wrong with Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, Everton, the great Angry Birds the other side of Stanley Park, deserve their side of the story told.

While I’m not qualified to relate why this victory is so important to Everton fans, there’s a group of people who are: Everton fans. This issue tours the trajectory of Saturday’s match via the labrynthine pages of the Everton Internet message board It’s a Grand Old Team to Support.

Before diving in, it’s worth noting that Internet message boards are incredible places to beh. In the span of a single page, sentiment can range from stable optimism to that of the borderline radicalized. The next slow afternoon you have, make it a double and try one out.

Early Resignation

The thread’s first note, on page 1 of 338, comes from ‘Upper Left Blue', following a wildly inaccurate Thursday lineup prediction from a fellow user.

“We’re getting slaughtered,” he writes without reservation.

In so doing, ULB may have had in mind Everton’s 2-0 capitulation to Fulham the Saturday prior. It’s possible that the sight of Swedish goalkeeper Robin Olsen’s name on the team sheet, which is enough to loosen the bowels of any hopeful fan, may have similarly influenced ULB's prediction. But at the same time, did ULB not stop to consider the version of Liverpool that Everton were about to play? I do not believe that he did.

Still on the same page the reader gets a firm sense of how wool-dyed Everton’s resignation at playing away to Liverpool is, with ‘Auxlen’s’ prediction a few entries later:

“...the spirit of VVD to come down from heaven to header in a last-minute winner.”

I love this.

Name Calling

By the thread’s 90th page we’re only three minutes into the game. Richarlisson’s opening goal inspires this magnificent non-sequitur from ‘Dublin Blue 75’:

“Robertson, you dirtbird.”

It's bolstered nicely by an early contender for the line of the millennium from ‘Kev the Rat’:

“Let’s hope it’s not the hope that kills us.”

Incredible. I Googled this line to make sure it isn't from something else, but it was the only thing that came up in the search.

I mean, JESUS.

2nd half woes

You'd assume that anyone spending an entire game on their favourite team’s Internet message board would have at least a vague idea of their opposition. And yet strangely, ‘JimmerJeffers’, who contributes message #2,485 on the thread’s 166th page, drones, in what feels like typical Evertonian resignation:

“5 chances in 7 minutes. Doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going.”

Except, dearest Jimmer, that you are playing the 2021 iteration of Liverpool, a squad that is right now as effective in front of goal as 1999 me was in front girls. That is to say: hurried, uncertain, and wasteful.

The clouds begin to part...

It's around the thread’s 225th page, when it becomes clear that Everton are going to win the game, that the hubris starts to fly. To wit, another contribution from ‘Dublin Blue 75’:

“Pickford outstanding tonight. Ghosts exorcised.”

This needs unpacking because Jordan Pickford has not had a perfect 24 months as an elite level goalkeeper. DB75 is right: Pickford had a great game - the type of game that a keeper of his calibre should have 97% of the time - but the fact is that more often than not Pickford has been found flapping in his box, dropping balls and conceding silly goals like it’s preseason.

Another user, ‘Tubey’, lives up to his handle by suggesting:

"Pickford is Buffon here," to which the only response can be:

“Do not take the lord’s name in vain.”

Victory sets in...

The significance of the result, with the game out of reach in the fading light of added time, is brought into sharp relief by a man (presumably) named ‘Lob’:

“I think i might actually faint in a minute. We are actually going to win a Derby at analfield after 21 years…”

There’s no denying it: ‘Analfield’ is a very good mean name for Anfield.

Delirium

Pages 230 onward are a mess of vodka & snakebite-infused maunderings that variously lionize the Everton squad and manager Carlo Ancelotti. The best of the lot is this masterpiece from 'DanB90' on the thread's 300th page, which features Ancelotti dressed as Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat, with Jurgen Klopp’s head on a stick.

I don't know that a more definitively strange or strangely definitive piece of art has ever been made.