Everton manager David Moyes has openly questioned the refereeing performance in the Merseyside derby defeat to Liverpool, suggesting Anfield may have affected their decisions.
[Moyes was speaking to Viaplay](https://x.com/ViaplayFotball/status/1907548036852543760) after the game, which was settled by Diogo Jota’s superb solo strike midway through the second half.
He collected an interception from James Tarkowski on the edge of the Everton box and dodged several challenges with quick feet before firing past Jordan Pickford for the only goal of the game.
Everton were left aggrieved by the Liverpool goal, though, feeling it should have been ruled out for offside due to Luis Diaz’s involvement beforehand. He had been standing in an offside position behind Tarkowski when the initial ball was played towards him from midfield.
This led the Everton centre-back to stretch and intercept, with Diaz then latching on to the ball and flicking it to Jota, who did the rest. Everton argued Diaz had impacted the play and so VAR should have intervened but it didn’t, leaving Moyes clearly frustrated.
_“I think your wording is wrong there,”_ he said.
_“Might is the wrong word. It was offside. He came back on, he affected James Tarkowski clearing the ball so it should be offside given. The pass was put to Diaz, it was aimed at Diaz._
_“It’s not as if it went somewhere else. I thought a couple of the offside decisions tonight weren’t particularly good overall. There was one not dissimilar at the end of the game given._
_“They saw that one but didn’t see our one. It’s amazing at Anfield how that happens isn’t it?”_
Tarkowski was involved in all the controversy in the game as many felt he should have been sent off in the first half of the clash.
He was given a yellow card for a high challenge on Alexis Mac Allister that the PGMOL have since admitted should have been upgraded to a red card.
The tackle was very much an old fashioned one, with Tarkowski taking man and ball but clearly connecting with Mac Allister on the follow through. The Liverpool star was fortunate to escape uninjured.
And Moyes is willing to admit Everton were lucky on that front, even if he personally just thinks it was a tackle from a different era.
_“I thought it was a great tackle,”_ he added.
_“I thought it was a great old fashioned derby tackle but in modern money you probably would, your people (the media), would probably want a sending off. It was a great derby tackle of old but maybe we were fortunate not to see a red card.”_