Everton vs Liverpool Preview: Slot on the Brink, Moyes on the Rise & the First Merseyside Derby at Hill Dickinson
The sack odds came in on the 15th of April. Arne Slot at 2/1 to still be Liverpool manager at the start of next season, Xabi Alonso at 8/13 to replace him. Four days before a Merseyside derby his side cannot afford to lose.
On the opposite touchline, David Moyes walks in with a contract extension widely expected to be agreed in the summer, a former Everton chief executive publicly lobbying for a two-year deal, and Everton eighth in the table with a defensive record only two clubs in the division can better.
Moyes is being handed the next two years. Slot is being given four days.
A champion falling through the floor
Liverpool have lost four of their last five in all competitions. PSG twice over the Champions League quarter-final, an aggregate of 0-4 with zero shots on goal across the first leg in Paris. Manchester City 4-0 in the FA Cup at the start of the month. Brighton at the Amex before the international break. The only win in that run came at home to Fulham, and even that required five changes and a reactive performance from a team that spent most of the season thinking itself the benchmark.
Ten Premier League defeats in thirty-two games. Slot's win rate across more than a hundred matches has now slipped below Jurgen Klopp's career mark at Anfield. The underlying numbers are uglier than the table suggests, a side conceding two or more goals in the final twenty minutes of matches on eighteen separate occasions this season.
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Premier League defeats in 32 games. Liverpool's worst title defence in the Premier League era.
Tuesday night at Anfield was supposed to be the reset. Alexander Isak starting his first match since a broken leg in December, Florian Wirtz behind him, Hugo Ekitiké alongside, the £320m summer attack finally on the pitch together for what Slot described as the first meaningful minutes of their season. Ekitiké lasted until the first half before going down off the ball, and by Thursday Liverpool had confirmed a ruptured Achilles that ends his season and his World Cup.
You cannot write the script that Alex is back from four months with injury when the other one is injured.
— Arne Slot
So this is the team walking into Hill Dickinson. Fifth in the table, four points clear of Chelsea in sixth, a Champions League place no longer guaranteed, and a head coach whose odds of surviving the summer keep shortening.
Moyes has quietly built the third-best defence in the Premier League
Thirty-three goals conceded in twenty-nine matches as of early March. Third-best in the Premier League, behind only Arsenal and Manchester City. That is the story Everton have been quietly telling all season while everyone else wrote about the sack races and the title race.
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Goals conceded in 29 matches. Third-best defensive record in the Premier League.
Moyes inherited a team one point above the relegation zone in January 2025. Sixteen months later they sit eighth, level on points with seventh-placed Brentford, three points off European qualification and five points off the Champions League places, and unbeaten at Hill Dickinson against Chelsea and Burnley in their last two home matches. The Chelsea game in particular was the clearest expression of the Moyes blueprint, thirty-six percent possession, nine shots on target, Beto running through the channels while Garner and Gueye shielded the back four.
The Brentford draw a week ago extended Everton's unbeaten run to two matches and did not break the pattern. Moyes's side were reactive, absorbed pressure, needed a Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall goal in added time to rescue a point. That is not a collapse. It is a team playing to its profile and occasionally getting punished for it, a profile that happens to travel well into the kind of derby Liverpool cannot afford to turn into a transition game.
Across their last five Premier League matches, Everton have won three, drawn one and lost one, scoring ten and conceding six. Only Arsenal and Manchester United have picked up more points since matchday nineteen.
The striker Liverpool do not have
The Ekitiké injury forces Slot's hand in a way nothing else this season has. Isak started against PSG but Slot confirmed on Friday that the striker is not yet ready to play ninety minutes, seventeen weeks removed from the broken leg he suffered at Tottenham in December. Alisson is still not training with the first team after a hamstring problem, so Giorgi Mamardashvili keeps the gloves. Joe Gomez has now been ruled out of the derby after asking to come off against PSG, Slot confirming a straight “no” when asked if the defender was available. Curtis Jones was withdrawn at half time against Fulham with a groin issue but returned to the matchday squad for the PSG leg.
What that leaves is Cody Gakpo as the most likely false-nine, flanked by Mohamed Salah on the right and seventeen-year-old Rio Ngumoha on the left after his first Anfield Premier League goal against Fulham. Federico Chiesa is the alternative option through the middle if Slot opts against asking Isak to start again so soon. A forward line built by improvisation rather than plan, asked to break down the third-meanest defence in the division.
Everton arrive lighter on bodies but clearer on shape. Jack Grealish is out for the season, Carlos Alcaraz has missed seven consecutive Premier League squads with a knock and has played only eleven league minutes in 2026. Iliman Ndiaye returned for the full ninety at Brentford, and McNeil, Dewsbury-Hall and Ndiaye behind Beto is the settled front four of the 4-2-3-1 Moyes has used week in, week out.
Predicted Everton XI (4-2-3-1): Pickford; O'Brien, Tarkowski, Branthwaite, Mykolenko; Gueye, Garner; McNeil, Dewsbury-Hall, Ndiaye; Beto
Predicted Liverpool XI (4-2-3-1): Mamardashvili; Frimpong, Konaté, Van Dijk, Kerkez; Szoboszlai, Gravenberch; Salah, Wirtz, Ngumoha; Gakpo
Everton press, Liverpool possess
Everton are one of the best teams in the Premier League at forcing turnovers from the opposition. Only Manchester City, Brighton and Arsenal have won more turnovers in the opposition half this season. They press in waves, commit bodies forward quickly, and play more directly than almost any side in the division, a statistical signature of a team that values urgency over control.
Liverpool are the opposite shape. Possession-heavy, 53 percent at home to Fulham, build-up through inverted full-backs with Ryan Gravenberch as the zonal pivot alongside Dominik Szoboszlai. The problem is that their own high turnovers have collapsed from 8.1 per game last season to 4.4 this season, third-fewest in the Premier League.
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Liverpool's high turnovers per game, down from 8.1 last season. Third-fewest in the Premier League.
The press that defined the Klopp-era Liverpool has quietly disappeared.
The team behind it now plays a slower, more controlled game that relies on its front four to produce.
Where the game turns
Idrissa Gueye vs Ryan Gravenberch. Gueye is the detail of Moyes's midfield, the player who executed the Moyes blueprint most clearly against Chelsea with five interceptions, every duel won, and an assist for Beto's second from the base of the low block. Gravenberch is the Liverpool player responsible for moving the ball cleanly up the pitch at 89.4% pass completion, the zonal pivot Slot's possession game is built around. If Gueye and the Everton press can force Gravenberch and Szoboszlai to turn backwards, Liverpool's rhythm breaks before it starts.
The Everton centre-backs vs Cody Gakpo. James Tarkowski has been the quiet foundation of the best defensive season Everton have had in years. Jarrad Branthwaite alongside him gives Moyes a left-footed progressor and an aerial presence at the back post. Gakpo as a false-nine is not a plan, it is what Slot has left. Without Ekitiké or a fully-fit Isak, Liverpool's central threat becomes a winger dropping into pockets against two centre-backs who have faced that type of movement and read it well all season.
Dead balls, both ways. Everton have one of the meanest set-piece defences in the Premier League, with Opta recording no set-piece goals conceded away from home all season. Liverpool were historically poor at set pieces until New Year, scoring from only one corner in the first half of the season with just 48 percent inswinger delivery, the lowest ratio in the league.
Since the club parted ways with set-piece coach Aaron Briggs in December and Mohamed Salah took over right-side corner duties, Liverpool have scored from three corners in four matches. Florian Wirtz now leads the corner-taking rotation, with Salah and Szoboszlai sharing the rest. The set-piece gap between these sides is narrower than the first half of the season suggested, but Everton's structure in their own box remains one of the best in the division.
Goodison compressed favourites. Hill Dickinson hasn't picked a side yet.
Merseyside Derby Snapshot
vs
60+
PL-era meetings
26 Draws
Joint-most between any two PL rivals
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UEFA competition meetings
1st
Derby at Hill Dickinson Stadium
The last five derbies tell a less lopsided story, Liverpool winning three and Everton one with one draw, the kind of recent record that does not match the long-term narrative. Derbies at Goodison had a texture, a compression, that made favourites less favourite. Hill Dickinson is new ground, bigger sightlines, and nobody yet knows whether the visitors find it easier or harder than the stadium it replaced.
Six games, two directions
Everton sit eighth on forty-seven points with six matches remaining. Champions League qualification is a five-point gap and a practical pipe dream, but Europa League and Conference League football are both genuinely in play. European qualification would be the clearest vindication of the Moyes project, and a decision on his contract extension is expected in the summer.
Liverpool are fifth on fifty-two points, three behind fourth-placed Aston Villa and four ahead of Chelsea in sixth. A loss on Sunday puts them in genuine danger of missing the top four entirely for the first time in this era. The financial gap between Champions League and Europa League football runs to tens of millions of pounds, and the judgement on Slot cannot help but be shaped by which side of that line Liverpool finish.
Premier League Standings Snapshot
| Team | # | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 5 | 32 | +10 | 52 |
| Everton | 8 | 32 | +2 | 47 |
Kavanagh in charge
Chris Kavanagh takes the whistle. The English referee is averaging around four cards per match in the Premier League this season, in line with the league average. His career record with Liverpool is strong, seventeen wins from twenty-nine matches and counting, though his Everton record is more mixed at six wins, six draws and seven defeats from nineteen games. Moyes was booked for his celebrations in a match Kavanagh refereed at Brighton earlier this year, a detail that says something about how tightly Kavanagh referees Everton's fixtures.
Referee Stats: Chris Kavanagh
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| PL Matches (25-26) | 23 |
| Yellow Cards | 90 |
| Red Cards | 2 |
| Avg Cards/Match | 4.00 |
| Career Liverpool Record | 17W from 29 matches |
| Career Everton Record | 6W 6D 7L (19 matches) |
Moyes was booked for celebrations in Kavanagh's Brighton vs Everton fixture at the Amex earlier this year.
The weight on two managers
Moyes is building something: a defensive record, a contract extension, a squad settling around an owner who wants long-term planning after two decades of firefighting. Slot is defending something. His job, a title defence that has already collapsed, and a top-four finish that has stopped looking automatic. Two managers walking into the same match from opposite directions.
Moyes has four league wins against Liverpool in forty career meetings. The last one came in November 2021 at West Ham. Everton at home, with the third-best defence in the division and a Liverpool team missing its centre forward, is the cleanest chance he has had in fifteen years. Slot arrives with his sack odds at 2/1 and everything to lose.
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