Football news - The Warm-Up: Liverpool tonk Everton to restore their Premier League lead

What’s the plan with these staggered kick-off times, then? Our guess is that Amazon are hoping that viewers will watch their chosen game — the one with the team they support playing in it — and then switch over to the later game to sneak an extra 45 minutes of football into their lives. It’s a game of three halves, after all.

Kudos, then, to Liverpool and Everton for racking up six in the first half, and then, after everybody else had finished and the eyes of the nation belonged to them alone, doing bugger-all for almost the entire second period. Just a late Gini Wijnaldum goal at the abominable hour of After Ten O’Clock.

This expert prankwork aside, things went pretty much as expected. Liverpool are the best team in the country. Everton are at best the third best team on Merseyside. You may take that as a “Liverpool Reserves” or a “Tranmere Rovers” gag as you please.

And if Marco Silva’s job was hanging on this game, then he needs to talk to HR immediately. That cannot be fair.

On the other hand, if Silva was being kept on as a human shield so the next man didn’t have to face the full fury of a title-chasing Liverpool, that can’t have been much fun either. Life must be nice for Liverpool. Not only are they the only competent horse in their two-horse race, but their closest rivals appear to have the most cursed dugout in the league.

Best of luck to his successor. May that word not be the closest you get to success.

In defiance of the narrative and of simple common sense, Manchester United — who couldn’t beat Aston Villa at home — beat Tottenham Hotspur at home, bringing Jose Mourinho’s blessed start to a juddering halt. Did Solskjaer enjoy the win more, or the head-pat?

And aren’t United weird? Wins over Chelsea, Leicester, Spurs, and the only team to take a point off Liverpool; losses to Newcastle, West Ham, Bournemouth, and strange draws all over the place. A midfield obviously improved by the return of Scott McTominay: is he actually good? Like, properly good? Is Fred?

The Warm-Up doesn’t know the answer to these questions, but the three points mean we probably get a little longer to find out if Solskjaer does. In this he owes thanks to Marcus Rashford, who was excellent, and Spurs, who looked like an okay team making lots of poor decisions.

Which is why they’ve got a new manager, after all. Despite the sharp beginning, there was always going to be more to fixing Spurs than simply kidnapping Dele Alli’s brother. The defence is still stocked with potential liabilities, and the midfield … well, they got rolled by McTominay and Fred. Time for Mourinho to start earning his massive piles of money.

In truth, the highlight of Amazon’s first foray into Premier League football was the return of Tim Sherwood to the Warm-Up’s consciousness. Fair to say he had a mixed night. He called Southampton to beat Norwich, and they did; he called Spurs to win at Old Trafford, and that didn’t go quite so well.

But it was his rousing defence of Watford’s squad that really caught the imagination:

They may not have a manager, again, for the second time this season. They may not have a functional defence. They may, point for point, be among the worst teams on the entire continent. And they may, of course, be bottom of the league. But none of that matters to real men. To British men. To Tim Sherwood.

Excellent work, South America.

Presumably the reason England hasn’t had a World Cup for a while is that FIFA can’t risk the FA taking a similar tack with their new spin on World Cup Willy: an eight foot tall costume of a well-refreshed middle-aged man, wearing nothing but a cheeky grin, with a trilby clamped modestly over his crotch.

The last time Everton won at Anfield, Kevin Campbell scored the only goal, and a 19-year-old called Steven Gerrard was involved. Though not for the whole game: he was one of three players sent off. The other two were for a stand-up slapfight; Gerrard got his for a tremendously pointless flying tackle on Campbell.

Amazon, incidentally, had just started selling computer games.

Over on the Athletic (£), Jack Lang, formerly of this parish, takes a look at the decline and decline of Deportivo de La Coruña. Once upon a time…

…but now they’re 22nd in Spain’s Segunda Division B.

The Amazon experiment in smearing the Premier League over three days of the week comes to a close: Brighton are off to Arsenal, and Sheffield United host Newcastle.