Everton 0-2 Liverpool match report: The Daily Mirror verdict

It was Alan Hansen who said Liverpool's season could have been much worse without Pepe Reina. Well, now, it may just get infinitely better because of him.

The goalkeeper's truly outstanding save from Tim Cahill was one of those defining incidents, not just within this match, but perhaps for the whole season. On such moments are entire campaigns turned around.

At the end of an absorbing, if often appallingly deficient, contest, Jamie Carragher offered perhaps the best summation of what happened. First, he took a match ball to kick to the celebrating Liverpool fans, but succeeded only in slicing it horribly into the Park End, some 50 metres wide of the target. As comments go on the quality on show, it was painfully perfect.

But immediately after, he ran half the length of the pitch to embrace Reina, and talk passionately into the Spaniard's ear. We don't need the usually obligatory Scouse translator to tell us exactly what was said, because the keeper not only saved from Cahill, and then immediately from Marouane Fellaini, he saved his side and their season.

It was a stop that had echoes of Gordon Banks - and yes, it really was that good - and is unlikely to be surpassed this season. Good enough, too, to have even the watching Henry Winkler, the Fonz to you and me, raising his thumbs in affirmation of what he had just witnessed.

Without it, Everton would have been level, and given that Liverpool have tended to collapse recently when they concede, as recent results against Lyon, Birmingham and Manchester City testify, there is every chance the home side would have gone on to win the game, and certainly, their performance justified it.

Yet, when the dust settles after another typically controversial derby, Rafael Benitez may consider that his side's escape act at Goodison can provide massive benefit. After being pinned back and even outplayed for significant sections of the game, to survive with a morale-boosting victory can instantly provide the confidence that has been badly missing.

The sight of Benitez haranguing his full back Glen Johnson midway through this match, and miming with authentic accuracy the action of hoofing the ball high and long into the Merseyside night sky - a clear instruction - was the depressing, enduring image of Liverpool's approach to the inevitable artlessness of the derby.

Yet a win is a win, and more significant still when you have managed just two of them in your last 11 matches. Everton's campaign last season was turned around by one tackle on Cristiano Ronaldo by their skipper Phil Neville, so who knows what effect victory at Goodison, a clean sheet and some resilient defending can have on Liverpool's demeanour?

And on Everton's too. They know all too well that they should have got more from this encounter, but were undone by some woeful finishing, and some pretty awful defending too, at the wrong moments.

Liverpool's opening goal was fortunate in the extreme, but summed up the frustrations of the home side in recent weeks. As Javier Mascherano advanced on 12 minutes after almost constant Everton pressure, he was faced with precisely no options.

His response was a speculative shot so bad, that it may even have gone out for a throw in, but instead, it struck Joseph Yobo and ballooned in cartoon fashion into the air and beyond the despairing grasp of Tim Howard in the Blues goal.

For the rest of the half, David Moyes' side advanced forward at will, and created enough chances to have controlled the game comfortably, but spurned each and every one. The worst was a miss at the far post by Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, which will haunt him for some years, as he contrived to spoon wide of an open goal.

Jo did find the net, but had stupidly wandered a fraction offside, then Bilyaletdinov just failed to reach a fine flick by Cahill, as Everton generated pressure and momentum. Yet it was still Liverpool who finished the half with a chance for Emiliano Insua that Howard saved well.

After the break it was the same story as Steven Pienaar and Bilyaletdinov provided the only real technical skills on show, and when Cahill got a perfect flick onto John Hietinga's flat free kick, it seemed they would get their reward. Somehow though, Reina got down impossibly to his left and then got up to block the fiercely struck rebound from Fellaini.

Inevitably, Everton paid the price for such profligacy when Yobo made a horrible mistake to gift the ball to the otherwise subdued Steven Gerrard, who set up sub Albert Riera for a shot that Howard could only parry to the waiting Dirk Kuyt to convert.

The Fonz was at the game because he is playing Captain Hook at the Liverpool Empire. With this victory and Reina's contribution, the Reds may just have emerged from a pantomime of their own.

Everton: Howard 7; Hibbert 6, Yobo 5 (Neill 86), Distin 6, Baines 6; Pienaar 8, Fellaini 7, Heitinga 6; Cahill 7, Bilyaletdinov 6; Jo 5 (Saha 66, 5).

Liverpool: Reina 8; Johnson 6, Carragher 6, Agger 7, Insua 6; Mascherano 6, Lucas 6; Kuyt 6, Gerrard 6, Aurelio 6 (Riera 78, 6); Ngog 6 (Benayoun 75, 5).