Everton defied concerns that an unaccommodating fixture list – facing four of last season’s top six in the space of four games – would create a sticky start to the season with a strong performance against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Monday night.

The Toffees failed to take advantage of the title-hoping hosts going a man down after Kyle Walker incurred a second yellow card but still came away from Manchester with a huge point, especially considering Pep Guardiola’s side are expected to battle it out at the Premier League’s summit this term.

Vital to the result was the effectiveness in which Dominic Calvert-Lewin lead the line, causing problems for City’s back three on the break while providing the physical presence and creativity in the final third to bring Wayne Rooney into the game – epitomised by the 6 foot 1 Englishman assisting his compatriot for the second time this season.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, it was Calvert-Lewin who ran away with our poll when we asked Everton fans earlier this week to vote for their Man of the Match. In a fine display from the 20-year-old, he created four chances, completed two dribbles, won two aerial duels and two fouls.

One of the biggest fixtures in the Premier League calendar, Liverpool v Arsenal pits two of English football’s most successful clubs, but over the last 10 years, these two giants of English football can count just four trophies between them: Arsenal’s three FA Cups in four years, and Liverpool’s 2012 League Cup triumph.

Despite the relative lack of success, though, the Premier League has changed dramatically over the last two seasons, and that means both of these teams are fighting with the rest of the top six for every domestic honour – not to mention a place in the top four and a spot in the Champions League.

Last season, Liverpool beat Arsenal twice, and if either one of those games had even ended in a draw, it would be Arsene Wenger’s Gunners in the Champions League this season, with Jurgen Klopp’s Reds having to settle for a place in the Europa League. Such are the fine margins the Premier League comes down to these days.

Head-to-Head

Since the inception of the Premier League, this fixture has been incredibly closely fought overall, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

The stats say that no side has had the upper hand in this fixture, but from March 1994 to August 2000, Arsenal failed to beat Liverpool in 14 attempts in all competitions, 12 in the Premier League and two in the League Cup. Since then, the tables have been turned and it’s Arsenal who have been the dominant side.

Until last season.

Last time, Liverpool did the double over Arsenal for the first time since the 1999/00 season. Is this a sign of things to come? Or just a quirk of Liverpool’s odd record last season where they seemed to beat the top sx teams but drop points to sides lower in the table?

Top Scorer

Top scorers in Liverpool v Arsenal fixtures in the Premier League tell the same story of Merseyside dominance in the 90s and north London dominance in the 00s.

Robbie Fowler is the top marksman in this fixture in the Premier League with 10 goals, whilst Thierry Henry is just behind him with nine.

But that just shows the quality of this fixture – both sides’ top scorers against the other is a bona fide Premier League legend, though an honourable mention has to go to Andriy Arshavin, whose five goals in this game puts him just one behind Steven Gerrard, even though four of those goals came in just one game.

The Unforgettable Match

That one game, though is the unforgettable epic that was the 4-4 draw at Anfield in April 2009.

That year was without doubt Liverpool’s best chance to win the Premier League until the 2013/14 season when Steven Gerrard’s memorable slip against Chelsea saw Manchester City pip the Reds to the post.

The draw with Arsenal at Anfield was a classic for the ages, where the lead changed hands plenty of times on a tumultuous afternoon.

A 90th minute Andriy Arshavin goal – his fourth and final goal of the game – looked to have won it for Arsenal and gifted the title to Manchester United, but Yossi Benayoun, who would later go on to play for Arsenal, popped up with a late equaliser.

It wouldn’t have mattered in the title race anyway. The draw was Liverpool’s only dropped points since February, but so consistent were United that they still won the league by four points. The extra two for beating Arsenal may have put added pressure on Alex Ferguson’s side, but we’ll never know if they would have cracked.

The Shared Hero – Kolo Toure

Despite his last-minute equaliser to cancel out Arshavin’s last-minute strike, Yossi Benayoun could hardly be described as an Arsenal legend, having spent a season at the Emirates on loan and even captained the Gunners in a League Cup tie against Manchester City.

Outside of the Premier League era, figures like Ray Kennedy – who played over 200 times for Arsenal and nearly 400 times for Liverpool, winning multiple league titles and European honours with both clubs – and Michael Thomas – who famously scored a last-minute goal at Anfield to win the title for Arsenal, before going on to represent Liverpool with distinction, winning an FA Cup and a League Cup with the club.

But in the Premier League era, Kolo Toure stands out as a player who played for arguably the defining sides of both clubs’ Premier League history.

For Arsenal, that’s an obvious one, as Toure played in the Invincibles side of 2003/04. But for Liverpool, perhaps it’s more debatable.

In the Premier League era, however, most of the Reds’ most memorable success has come in Europe, and for that reason, the 2013/14 side which almost won the title under Brendan Rodgers has to be considered the defining Liverpool side of the Premier League, having scored over 100 goals and looked for so long like they were going to finally bring the Premier League title to Anfield.

Before Manchester City demolished Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday afternoon, the Reds’ clash with Spanish giants Sevilla looked like a test of the progress Jurgen Klopp’s side had made since their defeat in the 2016 Europa League final. Now the tie looks to have taken on a different dynamic altogether.In the moments prior to Sadio Mane’s red card just before half-time at the weekend, the prevailing view was that Liverpool were at least holding their own, if they weren’t even the better team outright. The scoreline already read 1-0 by the time the Senegalese international’s boot connected with Ederson’s cheek and jaw, but Mohamed Salah – withdrawn strangely by Klopp at the break – had Nicolas Otamendi on a booking and City’s defence didn’t look like it was capable of holding out for 90 minutes against the Reds at their full complement. No-one knows how the game would have ended if the sending-off hadn’t happened, of course, but 5-0 to the hosts seems like a stretch of the imagination.And yet, coming on the back of such a heavy defeat, no matter the circumstances, you always wonder how the team will pick itself up. Notwithstanding the fact that most onlookers aren’t treating Liverpool as they treated Arsenal after the Gunners’ thumping at Anfield just before the international break, the professional pride of Klopp’s players must have taken something of a battering at the weekend.The problem is you can’t mitigate such a defeat by simply pointing to the fact that the entire Liverpool squad – from management down – waved a bloodied white flag in the face of the frighteningly pointless exercise that was a second half against Manchester City away with only ten men. Even with the score already at 2-0. You can’t mitigate such a defeat in that way because when you think about it, that’s actually worse.In the short term, Liverpool aren’t as bad as 5-0 suggests, and that knowledge should mean another collapse of similar proportions is unlikely against Sevilla. But in the long term, just how can a group of professional footballers justify their day’s work if that’s the conclusion they draw?There’s no accusation that they did ‘give up’. Not anything other than what was visible from the second half performance, at least. But if it is tempting to use that as an explanation of why the scoreline was so high, it should also come with an explanation as to why a group of players with that mentality shouldn’t be slated for a heavy defeat away to a top six rival.The first half against City showed us nothing new. Liverpool are a side who, last season, proved they have the setup to beat any other top six side. They are frightening in attack, but also suspect at the back, too.And yet, the second half raised questions which should be extended beyond the caveat of a red card which undoubtedly changed the game. Liverpool’s character should be called into question, even if they aren’t actually as bad as the scoreline made them out to be.But one other question was raised on Saturday, and we didn’t see an answer to it. We won’t see it answered on Wednesday night at Anfield either, because Sadio Mane’s suspension won’t take effect until the next Premier League game, but it will be intriguing to see just how Liverpool will cope with the absence of a player they couldn’t live without last season.That’s why the substitution of Mohamed Salah against City was so strange – though mitigated by the fact that Liverpool may well have sensed the situation was unrecoverable. The Egyptian was bought seemingly with the intention of providing the same impact as the Senegalese attacker, but just on the other side. The implication being that Salah would provide the Mane threat in the absence of the man himself -something that was sorely missing last year.So in the end, Liverpool’s defeat at the weekend both taught us nothing new, and yet raised so many big questions which will need to be answered very soon. Over the last few months, progress at Anfield has been called into question. After 72 games in charge, the German has won fewer games and fewer points than his predecessor Brendan Rodgers, despite bringing the side to a Europa League final and qualifying for the Champions League in his two-or-so years at the club.

But if the idea of meagre progress wasn’t enough of a metaphor for the entire Jurgen Klopp era, the arrival of Sevilla at Anfield means Liverpool once again pit themselves against the Spanish side who beat them to the Europa League crown in 2016 and also effectively knocked them out of last season’s edition Champions League.

It is, by anyone’s standard, a game to be seen as mark of progress. But on the back of two mixed results – a heavy victory and a heavy defeat – there are legitimate issues to be raised concerning Liverpool’s progress. Are they better at the back than they were before? Are they genuinely better-off under Klopp? And, to a lesser extent for now, has this season’s summer business done enough to prepare the club for a Champions League campaign and an assault on a first trophy since 2012?

This game is still a test of progress, but instead of feeling good before the measure up, Liverpool should be worried about finding out they’ve stood still.

Crystal Palace’s season has consistently been going from bad to worse. Not only are the Eagles rock-bottom of the Premier League table without scoring a goal, but their club-record signing and star striker Christian Benteke will now be sidelined through injury for the next six weeks.

Aside from being their most talented player, the real problem is that Palace don’t have an obvious understudy for the Belgium international, with Connor Wickham also on the injury list.

With that in mind, we asked Palace supporters earlier this week to vote for who they’d like to see fill Benteke’s void in the coming weeks and it was Freddie Ladapo who won our poll with 38% of the vote.

That is despite the 24-year-old being yet to make a competitive appearance for the South Londoners after moving to Selhurst Park from Margate back in 2016 and scoring just six times during two loan spells in League One.

But perhaps the bigger surprise is how poorly Andros Townsend fared in our poll. Despite being a borderline forward by trade as one of Palace’s wide-men, just 6% would like to see the England international fielded up front – a third of the amount willing to give centre-back Scott Dann a chance.

The rivalry between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur is a fierce one, but on some occasions, the feud is put on the back-burner.

It seems that Arsenal legend Ian Wright decided to do just that when he praised Spurs striker Harry Kane for receiving a prestigious nomination.

The 24-year-old has been named within a 30-man shortlist for the Ballon d’Or, which has gone back and forth between Barcelona star Lionel Messi and Real Madrid hero Cristiano Ronaldo over the years.

The latter is favourite to nab his fifth award, but it is a special achievement for Kane, who is the only Englishman on the list.

Wright has a strong loyalty to Arsenal given that he spent seven years of his career playing for the North London outfit.

However, the 53-year-old decided to give a special mention to Kane after the striker was announced as one of the nominees.

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The homegrown Tottenham player has scored 11 goals in all competitions for his club this season.

The UEFA Champions League was once a competition that had potential for a team like Celtic. Former winners of the European Cup, they have a history with the trophy that has provided the club decades of fearlessness when it comes to facing off against European giants, such as tonight’s opponents Bayern Munich.

However, in recent years, it has rapidly become a two-tier affair, with the continent’s richest clubs consolidating their wealth and exerting more and more power not just on the pitch in a footballing sense, but on the entire structure of the competition.

Since the birth of the group concept in the 90s, the biggest, wealthiest clubs have more often than not risen to the top, but underdog stories are now few and far between and the ever expanding scorelines in matches between the super-elite and the rest are threatening to make the entire thing irrelevant for clubs like Celtic in a competitive sense.

Even the Hoops, almost at the peak of their abilities under Brendan Rodgers, have suffered heavy defeats from the likes of Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, highlighting how difficult it is to pierce through the status quo and achieve something in the group stages. Gone are the days that Celtic fans dream of finishing second, it’s all about that race for third now and dropping into the UEFA Europa League.

Can the Hoops lead the way for the small cabal of historic, prestigious clubs who dominate their domestic leagues but miss out on the riches of TV money, or has the competition purely become a vehicle to ensure that a similar disparity exists in their own nations?

Celtic’s own monopoly

For two years running Celtic have qualified for the group stages of the Champions League, netting upwards of £60m in European cash alone. That’s a number that dwarfs anything any other Scottish club can generate and it, of course, is not even the extent of the Hoops’ revenue with season ticket sales, profit on player sales and all the rest of the commercial activities adding up to a turnover that other clubs can’t compete with in Scotland, even Rangers.

It’s not a criticism, nor is it unique to Celtic. Take Dinamo Zagreb for instance, between 2005 and 2016 they won their league an incredible eleven times, banking the riches of Europe in each season whether from the groups of Champions League or Europa League. It was money that allowed them to stay ahead of the rest in Croatia and continue the cycle of success year upon year, without ever actually achieving anything in continental competition.

This is what the Champions League has become for Celtic, providing a consistent level of cash that allows them to be the biggest and best club in Scotland, by a distance, with Europe becoming a place of frustration for fans who are looking for the club to be competitive.

Breaking through

Celtic though are one of the teams who can prove that, in a competitive sense, there is still life in the Champions League yet for clubs outside of the established top twelve to sixteen. They have some unique attributes that can allow them to break through to the other side and perhaps do something a little bit special and upset the big boys, if not this year, then next.

In Celtic Park they have one of the biggest and noisiest stadiums in Europe and, while it doesn’t quite have the same reputation as a continental fortress it did a decade ago, it’s still a place where magic undoubtedly can happen.

In Brendan Rodgers they have a coach who is trying to bring the mentality that the super-elite clubs have to players who have long lacked confidence at this level. He’s brought expectations back to getting results away from home in the competition which even under Martin O’Neill, Gordon Strachan and Neil Lennon was something that Celtic could rarely do. He’s here for another few years at least and it appears his main focus is on building Celtic back into a European force. On multiple occasions this season already he’s rotated his side massively to p provide a boost in Champions League fixtures. There’s ambition there.

Whether that ambition can result in real progress in the competition remains to be seen. Tonight’s match against Bayern Munich will be a key indicator of what stage the club are at right now.

The Champions League is in serious danger of becoming a closed shop and unless teams like Celtic can do something about it, it’s a competition that will soon have no meaning at all for a club that once prided itself on being the European elite.

Liverpool are interested in signing former Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas, according to The Sun.

What’s the word?

The Spanish shot-stopper has been at Porto for the last two years after ending his 16-year-old stint at the Bernabeu.

The 36-year-old was a regular at the Portuguese club, but in the last two games he has been relegated to the bench, making way for Jose Sa.

According to The Sun, Liverpool as well as Newcastle United are keen to sign the experienced goalkeeper.

Casillas’s current contract at Porto expires at the end of the season.

Is Casillas the answer?

Liverpool’s current goalkeeping options of Simon Mignolet and Loris Karius have shown that they have mistakes in them.

A club rarely wins titles without a world-class man between the sticks, and Casillas has certainly proved that he is cut from that cloth.

However, Liverpool’s problems extend beyond the goalkeeper, and while having confidence in the shot-stopper is important for defenders to do their job, it is not enough.

At the moment, Jurgen Klopp does not have a good enough player sitting in front of the back four to protect them.

Jordan Henderson and Emre Can have their qualities, but they have been unable to fill that role.

It could be argued that the Reds’ defenders, who have shipped 16 goals in the Premier League this season, would feel more secure with a goalkeeper of Casillas’s quality, but he will not solve all their problems.

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It has been a long time coming, but Everton fans are finally celebrating.The Toffees are in a transitional period following the sacking of manager Ronald Koeman, who oversaw just two wins in nine Premier League games this season.Under-23s coach David Unsworth is in temporary charge, but he too got off to a poor start.The 44-year-old oversaw defeat to Chelsea in the Carabao Cup, as well as a loss to Leicester City in the league and elimination from the Europa League as the team were beaten 3-0 by Lyon.On Sunday, though, the Toffees performed a comeback by responding to being 2-0 down against Watford.Second-half goals from Oumar Niasse and Dominic Calvert-Lewin pulled Everton level with the Hornets at Goodison Park, but it was Leighton Baines’s 91st-minute penalty that turned out to be the winner.Everton were given a slice of luck when Tom Cleverley squandered the opportunity to level things up for Watford by missing from the spot.After the match, Idrissa Gueye, who played the full 90 minutes, sent a message to the fans.

Liverpool won their third Premier League match in a row for the first time this calendar year on Saturday, blowing away Southampton at Anfield with a 3-0 victory.

It was a confident performance from Jurgen Klopp’s side, moving to within just a point of fourth placed Tottenham Hotspur in the league table.

The star of the show was undoubtedly Mohamed Salah, scoring a double to move top of the Premier League scoring charts. He’s now netted 13 goals in all competitions for the Reds, proving himself to be one of the best signings of the summer transfer window.

Philippe Coutinho was also back to his best on the afternoon, setting up one of Salah’s in the first half before netting himself after the break.

Supporters were blown away by the performance of Salah with some even suggesting he could be the best signing the club has ever made.

They took to Twitter to share their thoughts…

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Former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg stunned fans when he admitted that “allowed” Tottenham Hotspur to “self-destruct” against Chelsea in their 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge in the 2015-16 campaign.

While speaking on NBC’s Men In Blazers podcast, the County Durham-born referee revealed that he purposefully did not send off any Spurs fans during the game as he did not want to be blamed for the club’s title demise.

The contest was a fiery affair between the London rivals, who broke out into two mass melees during play.

Nine yellow cards were brandished to Spurs players, who handed the English crown to shock winners Leicester City as a result of failing to beat Chelsea.

Clattenburg’s claims have caused quite a stir, but Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino has refused to be drawn into the debate.

According to Sky Sports, when asked about the remarks, the Argentine told reporters:

“No comment. Two years ago, no comment. Sorry I’m not going to say anything.”

Pochettino did, though, answer when asked if referees should speak about the matches that they oversee.

“I don’t know. It’s so difficult to talk about that subject. My position now is I want to be away and I don’t want to talk about the decision of the referee. I don’t want to talk about their behaviour. I don’t want to talk about if they were good or no good.

“I understand that it’s so difficult. It’s not easy to be a referee. We can see in every single training session when I’m in the middle of two groups when they are competing it’s so tough to say ‘foul, no foul’, ‘handball, no handball’, ‘penalty, no penalty’ or ‘it wasn’t a red card, it’s a yellow card’.

“We are the first to know their job is so difficult but I think I try to help them. It’s better to stay quiet and say nothing because I’m not going to help if I say some comments.”