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Everton defender Conor Coady has spoken about the experience of playing in a Merseyside derby, and the pain of having his ‘goal’ disallowed by VAR in Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Liverpool at Goodison Park in the Premier League.

The Blues defender who joined the club on loan from Wolves in the summer, was speaking to evertonfc.com about the game, he said : 

“It was a huge privilege to play in my first Merseyside derby and to experience that unbelievable atmosphere. It was Goodison at its absolute best.

As a local lad, I know full well what this game means to Evertonians and I’m proud that, as a team, we can say we gave absolutely everything and put in a top-drawer performance against a world-class team.

We’ve gone toe-to-toe with them and probably should have won the game.” 

Coady thought he had scored the goal that would have given Everton a first win over Liverpool at Goodison Park since 2010, only to see VAR disallow it for offside although there is now confusion over whether it should actually have stood. He said : 

“I’m devastated about my goal being ruled out for offside because I thought that’s what we deserved. We were fantastic. We nullified them – they are going to have chances, of course – but we have a world-class goalkeeper and we did well as a defensive unit, too.

It’s horrible when you score a goal and it’s ruled out later, I’m not going to lie. But you have to take it on the chin and we made sure we didn’t drop too much from that and allow them to score a winner.” 

Despite the fact that the Blues have failed to win so far in the Premier League, they are no actually 5 games unbeaten in all competitions, that the progress being made is there for all to see. Coady said : 

“Everyone who understands football can see that we’re moving in the right direction. It’s the Premier League, it’s hard to win football games. You’ve got to graft and graft and graft to win matches and we are doing that.

We’ve deserved to win games and we haven’t, so we need to put that right but people watching us can see the Football Club is coming together: the supporters, players and staff and we are working on that every single day and we’ll drive this club forward.”

Barry Cass