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There aren’t many times you can really be happy about a red card.

They’re detrimental to the team, to morale, and to a title charge that requires as many options as is possible to figure out the difficult situations football throws at you.

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But for Curtis Jones, the red card he got after the final whistle had blown against Everton last night was as close to a good red card as you can get.

Everton midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure had sprinted over to goad the (not so) travelling Liverpool supporters after James Tarkowski had volleyed the ball home to drag the game to a 2-2 draw.

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Curtis Jones saw this and was not about to let the Blue get away with it. He confronted him, incensed, and was punished in the harshest terms.

But it was amazing to see. A Liverpool player, a Scouser, a Red in every sense of the word, reminding the world on the biggest stage that football, at its very core, is about tribalism.

It also helps that Jones had managed to turn the game on its head, coming on on the 62nd minute to drag this Liverpool team to something resembling a good performance.

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Curtis Jones was Liverpool's X Factor

Jones completed 100% of his passes, livened up the intense Liverpool press and, most importantly, created Liverpool’s second goal.

Funnelling the ball out to Luis Diaz, Jones stayed in space on the left hand side, noticing the gap in Everton’s box. He burst into it as Diaz aimed to cross the ball, capitalising on a lacklustre clearance, playing a neat one-two with Darwin Nunez and shaping a shot that was travelling into the far corner of the net. It was cleared just off the line but thankfully fell to Mo Salah who, as the old adage goes, doesn’t miss from there.

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It was a directness Liverpool had been missing all evening. Everton were resolute defensively but there were spaces to be found in between their midfield and defence that Liverpool simply didn’t attack much all evening. Their opening goal came from one of the only times a runner saw this space and hit it - Alexis Mac Allister with a delightful header from a Salah cross.

Jones would have, understandably, been very eager to affect this game. But he also showed the football IQ that saw him displace Dominik Szoboszlai in the starting XI earlier in the season.

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Szoboszlai has been enjoying a nice run of form recently but, as he starts to falter again, Jones needs to be on hand to do it all over again. Liverpool’s title run might just depend on it.

Just not in the next game.

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