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The blue half of Merseyside demonstrate the benefits of stability on and off the field by beating the red half at Goodison

So the optimism of Saturday night and this morning proved no more substantial than the dawn mist on the Mersey. By tea-time today all the talk of a new stability, of complete confidence in the manager, of money to spend in the January transfer window, had faded into transparency, leaving Liverpool’s continuing problems in plain sight. The club may be under new ownership but they are in real trouble on the pitch, the sort that will take more than just a change of ownership to eradicate.

“Tom Hicks and George Gillett were about leverage,” Tom Werner, John W Henry’s partner in New England Sports Ventures, said on the radio a few hours before the match. “We are about winning.” In fairness he was speaking about the long term. But as Roy Hodgson said tonight, a Merseyside derby would have been the perfect time for the winning to start.

Despite the manager’s protestations that his players had produced their best performance of the season so far, and that only one of them – Fernando Torres, of course – was suffering from a lack of confidence, Liverpool never looked like overcoming Everton today.

No one could accuse them of a lack of effort but their inability to turn desire into effective action appeared entirely unaffected by the departure of the detested Hicks and Gillett and the arrival of an apparently more acceptable set of Americans.

After watching their new acquisitions hammered into submission, however, Henry and Werner may have found themselves wondering if they had bought the club at the wrong end of Stanley Park. Everton, victors in a Merseyside derby in the league for the first time since 2006, used Liverpool as a springboard, shooting up seven places to 11th in the Premier League table with a display that shoved their neighbours down to 19th, saved from holding up the table only by West Ham United’s inferior goal difference.

Hodgson spoke afterwards of the dangers of placing too much emphasis on the potential effect of activity in the January transfer window, and of the pressing need to string four or five wins together before the arrival of reinforcements. But it is hard to see where those wins are coming from after a match in which a tactically incoherent Liverpool, despite riding a wave of the emotions of the past few days, failed to overcome a team lacking Steven Pienaar, Marouane Fellaini, Jack Rodwell and Louis Saha, and with Mikel Arteta and Phil Jagielka selected despite incomplete recoveries from hamstring strains.

Everton’s fine performance, a judicious blend of skill and aggression, emphasised the value of committing to long-term stability and tailoring ambitions to means. They were a credit to themselves and to their manager, David Moyes, who makes no secret of his envy of the greater resources enjoyed by bigger clubs such as Liverpool but is never reluctant to acknowledge the support of a chairman who is, first and foremost, a lifelong fan of the club. By contrast Liverpool are venturing once more into the realms of external ownership, in which an unreasonable degree of faith is inevitably invested in the newcomers. All Liverpool’s staff and supporters have to cling to is the knowledge of what NESV achieved with the Boston Red Sox.

Based on that example, one can envisage Henry and his associates disappointing Liverpool’s local authority by abandoning the plans for a brand new stadium and choosing instead to refurbish Anfield, as they did with Fenway Park, making up for the lack of increased revenues through significant increases in seat prices.

The first World Series win in 86 years sweetened the pill for Bostonians and perhaps a successful return to the Champions League would mute the complaints of economically challenged Koppites. That will not happen, however, as long as Hodgson is forced to shield the impeccable José Reina – a more than worthy successor to Tommy Lawrence and Ray Clemence – with a defence that shames the memory of Ron Yeats, Chris Lawler, Tommy Smith, Phil Neal and Alan Hansen.

While Jagielka and Sylvain Distin were subduing Fernando Torres – not the most demanding of tasks, given the disappearance of every trace of coltish spring from the Spanish striker’s stride – up at the other end Sotirios Kyrgiakos and Martin Skrtel were being led a harrowing dance by Yakubu Ayegbeni, who scattered them time and again like an armoured car sent into battle against spear-throwers.

Of course Hodgson needs and deserves more time, and in the meantime he can be expected to take the pressure off his players by shamelessly exaggerating the quality of their performances. Few managers in his position would not do the same. But although local derbies are notoriously poor indicators of underlying form, today’s match suggested that Liverpool are indeed in unknown territory, with few familiar landmarks to help them grope their way to safety.

LiverpoolRoy HodgsonJohn W HenryEvertonBoston Red SoxRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk

• Representative says midfielder is chasing a move to Spain
• ‘Liverpool promised him that they would help him leave’

Liverpool’s unsettled midfielder Javier Mascherano is determined to join Barcelona, according to his representative in Spain.

The Argentinian informed the new manager Roy Hodgson that he wants to leave Anfield last month, and has also been linked with Internazionale in Italy.

Speaking to the Catalan radio station, Com Radio, Horacio Zandonadi said: “The player and all of us would be delighted if he could end up at Barcelona. We’re talking about a figure that is about half the size of what Barcelona were being asked to pay for Cesc Fábregas.

“He has not renewed his contract [with Liverpool] and they promised him that this year they would help him leave, so we’re talking about a situation that is much easier than it was last summer.

“Mascherano and [Lionel] Messi are friends, they get on very well because they are similar personalities. They are very professional, very committed and they love football and family.”

LiverpoolBarcelonaTransfer windowguardian.co.uk

• Benítez says managing director wanted him out of Anfield
• ‘It was a surprise – Purslow decided to do it this way’

Rafael Benítez has blamed Liverpool’s managing director, Christian Purslow, for his departure from Anfield and the club’s financial problems for last season’s dramatic downturn on the pitch.

The former Liverpool manager accepted a severance payment worth up to £6m to leave Anfield this month, following a miserable campaign that yielded a seventh-place finish in the Premier League and saw the club drop out of the Champions League for the first time in six years.

Benítez endured a fraught relationship with Liverpool’s co-owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, during his final years at Anfield and the pair tried to replace him as manager with Jürgen Klinsmann. However, the new Internazionale coach said the man responsible for his exit was Purslow, who joined Liverpool in June last year and is now overseeing the search for the Spaniard’s successor as manager.

“It was really sad,” Benítez said when discussing his departure in an interview with Radio City today. “I was on holiday so it was a surprise that everything was going on in this way, but at the end of the day it has to be like this because Christian Purslow is now in charge and he decided to do it in this way. That is it. It is really sad but you have to move forwards. I said to my family that we cannot stay talking too much or complain too much; we have to move forwards.

“The people of Liverpool are fighters and I was fighting from the beginning until the end. Now I have to do the same and I have to be thinking about the future. I was really pleased here, the fans were amazing, but I can’t stand around complaining. I have to move forward and do my best for my new club.” Liverpool declined to comment.

Roy Hodgson is expected to become the club’s next manager once the terms of his departure from Fulham and contract at Anfield have been resolved, but Benítez said the problems of last season will not be eradicated simply by his exit. “It’s strange. This year everything changed from the beginning,” he said.

“People in the club changed and the approach to everything was different. Clearly it was a question in the beginning of controlling the money we could spend or not, and everything was different to the past. We were so close to winning the title the year before that everybody was expecting something more but we couldn’t do it. We had some problems from the beginning with injuries and some performances, and there was a little bit of frustration. At the end the atmosphere was different and we can see now during the summer that the fans are not very happy.”

Benítez kept open the possibility of a return to Merseyside, insisting he has no plans to sell his house in Wirral. He added: “I can guarantee one thing – I will not sell my house. It is our home and we will come back. I don’t know when but we will come back for sure.”

Rafael BenítezLiverpoolAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk