Short answer, yes - IF we learn from it and storm the top 4 next season, building a squad who WANTS IT on derby day (ooh suit them!) eventually challenging for honours and winning a few teapots now and then.
That is largely down to Kenwright giving us a long overdue reason to believe in him.... or not as the case very well may be! The next couple of days will be CRUCIAL to how this season goes. Fail to sign any players and this season will be even more lopsided than 2004/05 was and it just becomes an experiment with all hanging on the FA Cup.
Anyone who thinks we will stroll to a massive win over Villa on Saturday needs shooting with a hand cannon.
In essence, we got what we wanted at Anfield on Tuesday... an attacking performance which I still take more encouragement from than the likes of Anfield 2008, 2010, 2012. However, I think under Moyes (particularly towards the end) we imagined some fairytale where under a new manager the reds would shyt themselves in surprse and give us that first away win in 15.... I know I did!
We underestimate the reds at our peril... as anyone else does with us of course when our squad is fully fit. Show them sportsmanlke respect off the pitch, but once that whistle goes they are for 90 minutes there to be tortured!
In any case our record against them is too poor to blame solely on refs, and given their unassailable lead in the historical head-to-head fact the team might as well treat it like any other game - could the solution be something as simple as that?
Or do they perhaps treat it TOO MUCH like any other game? This problem goes beyond the pitch and into the very psyche of the human mind and it's a case of nurture over nature. Gerrard is an animal through and through, end of. Baines and Ossie just seem too civilised as people to prevail in a local derby. We know Barkley wasn't match fit so I will not include him in this equation.
Think back to the 90s derbies and how combative our midfield was compared to theirs (albeit classier but less "hardened") - I sometimes read old reports because I'm a massive geek. In his match report of the
October 1997 derby (a 2-0 win), Guy McEvoy says:
"In midfield we were brutal, Ince and McManaman couldn't get in the game, Fowler was (probably is) impotent, the Foreign imported reds didn't look like they could be bothered playing. Yet again Everton were giving the Kopites a lesson in the meaning of the word 'pride'."
When was the last time we actually ROUGHED UP Liverpool in this way? Closed them down and chased it?
Learn from it or not though, I have never been this hacked off - not even after the Bucharest game. the 2012 semi or Norwich away last season!... Whatever the circumstances, the history books will show LIVERPOOL 4, EVERTON 0 - 28th January 2014 (Gerrard, Sturridge 2, Suarez)
It's all very well having a decent season with a positive manager, but when the gloryhunting, lousy, stinking 9/10ths of the city are presently strutting around in their kopite regalia like some sort of superior life form from Brave New World it can only get you down!