Martyn's just majestic

Liverpool -0 Everton - 0 Lost amid the mystified murmurings at the end, with Merseyside perplexed as to how this breathless bedlam had failed to yield a goal, Nigel Martyn retrieved his towel from the side-netting and caught the eye of one fan at the foot of the Kop.

"This fella just behind the goal said well played, congratulations, so I thanked him," said the Everton goalkeeper. "Then Jamie Carragher came up and said something along the lines of you lucky so and so."

Though that particular Scouse interjection may have been rather less complimentary, admiration for Martyn's performance on Saturday crossed the city divide.

This was a frenzied blur of a derby: from Steven Gerrard's blistering running in midfield to Alan Stubbs's unflappable defiance in the Everton rearguard; from the visitors' cries of blue murder that Sami Hyypia escaped a first-half red card, to the home side's furious disbelief that Liverpool's frantic late pressure failed to prise out reward.

But the overriding memory will be of Martyn thwarting everything belted, battered and bludgeoned in his direction.

It needed a performance as staggering as that to douse Gerrard's effervescence. Twice the midfielder sped into space and spat shots at goal that the 37-year-old tipped over or touched aside. A third attempt, steered low from the edge of the six-yard box, was palmed on to a post to leave the Liverpool captain cursing in the goalmouth mud.

Dietmar Hamann, slamming an early volley towards the top corner, and Carragher were left similarly aggrieved as Martyn simply would not wilt.

Martyn eclipsed the acrobatics of his opposite number Jerzy Dudek who excelled in twice denying Stubbs and smothering at the feet of Thomas Gravesen. Duncan Ferguson - under the cloud whipped up by Luis Boa Morte's allegations of racist abuse which will come to a head at Fulham in Wednesday's FA Cup replay - should have beaten the Pole but glanced a free header wide.

By then Everton were livid that Hyypia's clumsy intervention on Tomasz Radzinski had not prompted red - the Finn was retreating as the last defender and made inadvertent contact - and that Carragher's handball in an aerial challenge with Stubbs, had gone unpunished.

At least the referee, Steve Bennett, evened that count out by ignoring Ferguson's remarkable dunking of Hyypia in Everton's penalty area.

The point shared edged Liverpool nearer to Charlton in fourth and Everton marginally further from the relegation zone, though it was the home side's renewed verve and the visitors' solidity which offered encouragement.