A combination of two factors. For them it has increasingly become the biggest game of their season. Gerrard and Carragher have lost the consistency to perform for 38 games but play like men possessed whenever Man U or Everton come to Anfield. Its no surprise that some of the tems that have own there in recent seasons are very poor. It is the vestiges of their arrogance that lead to complacency and a poor performance. Lesser teams also have the option of playing 11 behind the ball, frustrating a poor Liverpool side and hoping to nick one. In the 90s under Royle this was us, Liverpool were the biggest game of our season, we always got up for it, for them it was just another game and someitmes they got complacent.
Now the tables have turned,
Moyes has drilled in an attitude of trying to perform the same way every game to bring us greater league consistency against the lesser sides. I genuinely don't believe that he sees this Liverpool team as he saw them when he first came in. He sees them as a team worse than us, as a game that somehow requires controlling with a preformulated plan, he tries to take a 'big club' attitude towards the match. For us they are just another game in our run in for Europe, not even the most important out that lot.
Moyes doesn't seem to realise that that approach is the wrong one to take to a derby and that they can never be controlled. I wish he'd approach it more like the City games where he seems to have a special big game formula that has us as the under dog able to shock the bigger team. As it is I've lost count of the times we've been at Goodison or Anfield passing it round bossing the game only for them to sit back and defend soak up pressure then hit us with sucker punches. I still can't believe the 2009/10 derbies were we battered them home and away and lost both and even the one at Goodison this season where they parked the bus. We alow them to play like that because we are better but not better by enough like a Man U are that have the quality to break down their mass defense. Basically they're the worse team for us to play because they play the stupid defensive counter attacking stuff familiar to the relegation teams we struggle to break down but have a bit of quality upfront to hurst us on the break. The rest of the top 10 actually play football which is why we tend to fare well against them as our ball players can play rather than being monstered by 10 defenders whenever they get near the 18 yard box.
The second reason is an inherent bias towards the RS that has existed since the dawn of time and has robbed us of countless results home and away against that shower. In smaller games at Anfield refs aren't bothered. In the big games they'll sometimes gift it to Man U. In big games against us we'll invariably never get anything.
