The Reds marked the first derby at the Hill Dickinson Stadium with a win after a late Virgil van Dijk header. Mohamed Salah had opened the scoring at Everton’s new home, his ninth against the Toffees, before Beto bundled home an equaliser in the second half.

Arne Slot’s men opened up an eight-point lead on their neighbours in the Premier League table, denying Everton the chance to move within two points of them with a win. They also solidified their place in the Champions League spots, pulling clear of Chelsea.

There was a lot of confusion on social media in the aftermath of the match. A lot of it centred around decisions not to book Van Dijk or Ryan Gravenberch and the call to deny Everton’s penalty claim in the first half.

However, another point of contention surrounded Liverpool’s substitutions on the day. The Reds were forced into an early change as Giorgi Mamardashvili was stretchered off through injury and replaced by Freddie Woodman.

Slot then used his second of three substitution windows to replace Alexander Isak with youngster Rio Ngumoha. That would leave the Liverpool boss with one more opportunity to make substitutions.

The visitors could still introduce three new players as they are entitled to five in total, but Premier League regulations state that play can only be stopped three timea exis Mac Allister and Jeremie Frimpong were introduced to replace Cody Gakpo and Florian Wirtz in the 84th minute. But then Andy Robertson made way for Milos Kerkez two minutes later.

This didn’t escape the attention of Everton fans, who quickly jumped on X (formerly Twitter) to express their confusion. One said: “Liverpool stopped the game 4 times to make subs. The maximum is 3.”

Another added: “How have Liverpool made subs on 4 different occasions excluding HT? I thought that wasn’t allowed??” Others made clear they weren’t simply showing tribal bias in their questions, as another supporter asked:

“I’m not a bitter toffee, but… I called it at the time, but Liverpool made 4 sets of substitutions, right?

“Their keeper with a dodgy leg/knee, then Isak got subbed off, then Wirtz and Gakpo, then later Robertson; how is that allowed?”

One more X user said: “On a related note – I thought you were only allowed 3 substitution windows – how come Liverpool used 4! Or does the goalkeeper not count as one as there were no concussion subs?”

While there was a gap between the Mac Allister and Frimpong substitutions and Kerkez entering the fray, play never actually restarted during that time. English defender Jarrad Branthwaite suffered a serious injury and was receiving treatment on the pitch.

He was then stretchered off, just as Mamardashvili had been earlier. However, the game didn’t actually restart until after the Kerkez introduction. This means no rules were actually broken, as play was only stopped three times for Slot’s substitutions to take place.