Everton vs Liverpool result: Mohamed Salah wastes glorious chances as anxious Reds fall behind in title race

Everton 0-0 Liverpool: Jurgen Klopp's side dropped points at Goodison Park to see Man City remain top

Everton still haven’t won a Merseyside derby since 2010, but this 0-0 will have felt so much closer to the feeling of victory than so many in that time. That’s because it might go a significant way to preventing Liverpool their own longer wait for the league title.

There’s still a lot of football to be played, but one thing is feels so crucially certain right now. Liverpool have properly slipped behind Manchester City - without any of the complications of games in hand or goal difference - for the first time in 2019. That was ultimately because so many of their attackers, and especially the now conspicuously misfiring and meek Mohamed Salah, just slipped up too many times.

This was a fourth draw in six in the league but, worse for Jurgen Klopp, another anxious and hesitant display. Everton were meanwhile aggressive and combative. They properly got amongst Liverpool, who couldn’t really get out of it.

There was no big Jordan Pickford error in this game, but instead one massive save, and so many Liverpool misses.

Nor was there any “World Cup final celebrations," of the type that brought so many jibes in the build-up. The Merseyside derby is actually not unlike the World Cup final in that it is always so hyped but often so poor a match, but this did end up different.

It was low on quality, yes - especially when it came to Liverpool’s finishing - but high on tension and that made it enticingly entertaining in the way that really lifts title races.

You could feel the weight of every moment, particularly with misses from Fabinho and Joel Matip so close to the end.

A stand-out moment came on 29 minutes, and not just because it was a rare chance in the first-half, or infrequent moment when the pitch opened up.

There was also what it stood for.

And it of course stemmed from a moment of low quality.

So frantic in so much throughout the game, Everton eventually made the kind of mistake that is always going to be inevitable amid such mayhem, as Morgan Schneiderlin miscontrolled on the halfway line. Jordan Henderson did play a supreme first-time ball over to the completely free Salah, but the Egyptian’s first-touch was anything but supreme.

Everton's Gylfi Sigurdsson in action with Liverpool's Andrew Robertson (REUTERS)

It took him too far wide, reducing the favour of the angle, but also giving Jordan Pickford the chance to properly read the striker while his defenders got back. The goalkeeper showed patience, stood his ground, committed at the right time and completed a fine save.

It was a world away from what happened with Pickford at Anfield in December, from what Salah was doing for so much of last season, and from so much of this game.

The goalkeeper showed composure amid so much chaotic running.

There was, admittedly, less thought to his contributions going forward. How else to explain the persistence with which Pickford was punting the ball up to Dominic Calvert-Lewin, long after it became clear that Virgil van Dijk was going to deal with such a move with ease?

But that was a lot of Everton’s game: a lot of force, not much thought to it.

What, mind, was going through Salah’s head after his second opportunity? It emphasised how the first miss has become part of a slightly concerning trend, rather than just one of those opportunities top forwards will actually miss more often than you think.

There just isn’t the same sharpness to him.

Put through after another Everton miscontrol, but this time so much closer to goal, Salah this time took too many ponderous touches rather than just one bad one. It allowed Michael Keane to storm back, and prevent the forward even getting the shot off.

Worse, such misses also seemed to be causing anxiety to spread among the Liverpool team. Sadio Mane, so lethal of late he was literally backheeling in from improbable situations, here could only softly head a good Roberto Firmino cross back across goal when he really should have been powering it at it.

There was just that lack of assertiveness to it all.

It did ensure there was no lack of tension, especially on the 68 minutes. Then, Van Dijk won a header in the Everton box, and sent it across the six-yard box for Fabinho.

Keane tackles Salah to deny Liverpool (Liverpool FC via Getty)

This was it. The ground seemed to stop… but so oddly, did, the midfielder. Fabinho just wasn’t anywhere near as urgent as Lucas Digne, who darted across to clear. The relief was visible in the Everton players, and palpable in the ground.

That was to be it from Liverpool. What summed up their display was one last surge when Mane had looked in place to set up Salah, only to play the most tepid of passes to nowhere.

There was admittedly nothing tepid about Everton’s ferocious defending, or their celebrations.

It wasn’t like a World Cup final. But it may mean so much for this Premier League.