This weekend’s Merseyside derby is about more than bragging rights

This weekend’s Merseyside derby between Everton and Liverpool will be one of the biggest in a long time.

Both clubs have made poor starts to their league campaigns and both sets of fans wouldn’t have expected to find their teams at the wrong end of the Premier League table after seven games.

Sold?

Usually in the week before a derby match the city is alive with the talk of the derby. However this week Liverpool fans have been preoccupied with getting rid of American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

As I write this article it looks as though Liverpool will be sold to American company New England Sports Ventures (NESV) for £300million.

With the owners trying to block this move you just never know what will happen next. Hicks and Gillett have tried to block the move but have failed so far. It doesn’t look like anything will be sorted out by the time of the derby.

Galvanise

The prospective sale of the club will galvanise Liverpool’s fans and players. It could prove to be a good time to play their neighbours. The likes of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher will be up for this game as always but sometimes the occasion gets the better of the local players.

Or the whole issue could prove a distraction and Liverpool boss Roy Hodgson certainly doesn’t need any more of those.

Doubters

Hodgson already has his doubters after a poor start to his career at Liverpool. If Liverpool loses to Everton on Sunday they will be in a real crisis. They will also find themselves in the relegation zone, a situation almost unheard of at Anfield.

Everton have also had a slow start to the season (typical of recent seasons) but most people say that the Blues should have collected more points from their first seven games. The problem with Everton is that the strikers are either injured in the case of Louis Saha and Victor Anichebe or out-of-form in the shape of Yakubu and Jermaine Beckford.

Draw

Liverpool have looked poor at the back this season and Everton have been poor up front. That suggests one thing on Sunday and that’s a draw. A lot of derby matches end in draws because of the intensity of the clashes. I can’t see this being any different from previous derbies.

Feisty

Every Merseyside derby in recent years has been feisty. I don’t expect that to change either. World Cup final referee Howard Webb could have a busy afternoon.

Last season’s clash at Anfield saw Liverpool reduced to ten men as Sotirios Kyrgiakos was sent off for a lunge on Everton’s Marouane Fellaini. The Everton midfielder was also criticised for his part in the challenge but it was the Belgian international that spent six months out injured because of the challenge.

I just hope that Sunday’s clash isn’t a game full of horror-tackles and cautions. Somebody once joked that for the first 30 minutes of a Merseyside derby the two teams kick each other and then somebody throws a ball on. I think that assessment is very near the truth!

Pivotal

This clash could be the turning point of the season for the winner but I think both sides would probably accept a draw if it was offered to them now. I can see a real stalemate with both sides still near the bottom of the Premier League by the end of the game.

Who will win the 214^th Merseyside derby?