In his first spell as Everton manager, frustrated by financial constraints, David Moyes used to lament that he was buying players on a supermarket budget while Liverpool and the rest of the Premier League's super-rich elite were "shopping at Harrods".

Even when Everton were able to push the boat out, others could stretch further. When the club broke its transfer record to sign Nigeria forward Yakubu for £11.25million ($15m at current rates) in the summer of 2007, Liverpool bought Fernando Torres for £20.2m. When Everton landed Marouane Fellaini in a £15m deal on transfer deadline day in September 2008, Manchester United and a newly minted Manchester City spent roughly double that sum on Dimitar Berbatov and Robinho.

So much has changed at Everton since those days. So much and yet so little. After a period of wild and mostly erratic spending under Farhad Moshiri's ownership left them in dire financial straits, the club are trying to rebuild cautiously under the Friedkin Group. In the intervening period, the financial divide between the Premier League's haves and have-lots has widened enormously, to the point where Everton's £109.8m-plus outlay this summer barely made a splash amid a league-wide spend of £3.1billion.

That context was hard to ignore when it came to Saturday's Merseyside derby. Everton recovered well from a poor start and pushed hard for an equaliser in the closing stages, but ultimately a 2-1 Liverpool win underlined the gulf in resources between the two clubs in 2025.

Liverpool's second goal was scored by Hugo Ekitike, an initial £69m summer signing from Eintracht Frankfurt; Ekitike was replaced in the closing stages by Alexander Isak, signed from Newcastle United for £125m; Florian Wirtz, a £116m arrival from Bayer Leverkusen, was another second-half substitute for the Premier League champions.

Everton's second-half goal came from a combination between Jack Grealish, who joined on loan this summer after falling surplus to requirements at Manchester City, Iliman Ndiaye, a £15m acquisition from Marseille, and Idrissa Gueye, who rejoined Everton from Paris Saint-Germain in a £2m deal in the summer of 2022 and will turn 36 next week.

There will be times, like at a raucous Goodison Park last February, when Everton can rise to an occasion and make life difficult for their neighbours. But when it comes to the bigger picture, Moyes is sensible enough to see that disparity for what it is. At Friday's pre-match news conference, he pointed out that Liverpool's superior spending power was a consequence of on-pitch success. They are reaping the rewards of a decade of growth. Everton are picking up the pieces after a decade of turmoil. What looked like a fair fight in the early 2010s -- Everton finished above Liverpool in the final two seasons of Moyes' first spell in charge -- is very different in 2025.

Where Liverpool had Ekitike and Isak, Everton had Beto and Thierno Barry. The latter pair did not come cheap -- Beto cost £25.75m in 2023 and Barry £27.5m this summer -- but that is a long way from the top of the market for a centre-forward these days. Beto, 27, has proved a willing outlet and a capable centre-forward, but he has scored 12 Premier League goals in 65 appearances (28 starts, 37 as a substitute). Barry, 22, is a fine prospect but although he is only four months younger than Ekitike, he looks less equipped to hit the ground running in the Premier League after a dizzying rise that brought him to Merseyside via spells in Belgium, Switzerland and Spain.

Beto has troubled Liverpool's defence in recent encounters, but he has started the season slowly and on Saturday, he looked like a blunt instrument. Moyes's game plan required the forward to hold the ball up, but he was smothered so effectively by Ibrahima Konate and Virgil van Dijk from the start. Barry, who replaced him at half-time, fared a little better, showing more finesse, but he also looked like a player with only 97 minutes of prior experience in the Premier League to his name.

"We still need to supply the forwards with really good opportunities," Moyes said afterwards when asked about the difference in firepower. "I've said many times and I'm repeating myself, but we don't have the 70s or 80s (millions of pounds) it takes to buy certain players. We have had to buy within our means and we will hugely support the ones we've got because they will score us goals and I'm sure they will have quite a few by the end of the season. I thought Barry came on and had moments, linked play a couple of times, bits of that, but he's still learning -- and it's a big place to learn, coming to Anfield."

It is. For half an hour, it looked like it could be the most painful lesson imaginable for Everton, with Liverpool rushing into a 2-0 lead through expertly taken goals from Ryan Gravenberch and Ekitike. After such a positive start to the season, Moyes's players were being overwhelmed. They couldn't keep possession. Play it short and they were at risk of being swamped by red shirts; play it long, towards Beto, and it wouldn't stick.

But Everton stabilised. James Tarkowski led by example in defence, James Garner and Gueye imposed themselves in midfield and Grealish, after a quiet first half-hour, started to see more of the ball. After a delightful dummy past Gravenberch, Grealish set up a chance from which Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall should at least have hit the target. Dewsbury-Hall got behind Conor Bradley in first-half stoppage time and picked out Gueye, who could not quite get hold of his shot.

Gueye made amends on 58 minutes, crashing the ball home in front of Everton's supporters. Again, it came down the left, with Grealish beating Bradley on the outside and floating a cross to the far post for Ndiaye to tee up Gueye. It was Everton's first goal at Anfield since that behind-closed-doors victory in February 2021. Improbably, the comeback seemed to be on.

Everton gave it a decent go after that. There were also some obvious frustrations. Dewsbury-Hall was shown a yellow card in the 78th minute for -- of all things -- trying to take a quick free kick. "I've never seen a player in my whole life get booked for taking a quick free kick," Grealish told the BBC afterwards. "We want to get the game going, we're losing and I've never heard of that in my life. Even the stoppage time, three minutes? I've never seen that in the Premier League in the last two or three years."

Moyes made the same arguments. But he also admitted his biggest disappointment was that "we didn't start the game better". "We were a bit more like ourselves in the first half, a bit more like Everton," he said. "We just gave ourselves a bit of a task too far."

This wasn't like some of those recent Anfield derby matches when Everton defended well for long periods before their resistance was finally broken. This one looked to be over -- even if it wasn't -- within half an hour. It took Moyes's miserable personal record at Anfield to 23 games without a win as manager of Everton (14 games), Manchester United (one), Sunderland (one) and West Ham (seven). The difficulty for any visiting manager these days is that, unlike in the early 2010s, away wins at Anfield are vanishingly rare.

Moyes spoke about how "clinical" Liverpool's finishing was. As well as the home team played in that first half-hour, it takes a certain quality of player to convert those openings as clinically as Gravenberch and Ekitike did. It is one thing to say that Liverpool shaded the game based on the expected goals (xG) metric, which registers the quality of chances created. It is perhaps more relevant to point out that, while the two Merseyside teams have registered an xG of just over seven in their five matches, Liverpool have scored 11 goals to Everton's six.

When Slot was asked afterwards about the quality of Liverpool's finishing and Ekitike in particular, he spoke about how "every top Premier League team has two great No 9s". But the reality is that there are not enough great centre-forwards to go around and, naturally, they end up at the clubs with the biggest budgets. Even Newcastle United, with their financial muscle, were frustrated in their efforts to find a top-calibre replacement for the Liverpool-bound Isak.

Everton are shopping in a different market, hoping to find bargains and hoping that, with a new stadium and with stability from their owner at last, they can rebuild in a way that makes them competitive again. In Moyes, they have a manager who understands that challenge and the patience and level-headedness it requires. He will know that Everton's season will not be defined by what happens in this fixture, however much it might have felt that way on Saturday evening.

Defeat to Liverpool shows Everton don't yet have capacity for striking gold