As much as we hate to admit it, Wayne Rooney has had a great return to his boyhood club Everton, as he notched up his second goal in as many games. The former Manchester United striker scored in the 1-1 draw against Manchester City and helped the Toffees continue their unbeaten start to the season.

There has been a lot of buzz ahead of Everton’s season as Ronald Koeman has brought in a number of reinforcements. There has also been a talk of the Toffees breaking into the top four.

However, there are a few who don’t think the other club from Merseyside are on the same level as Liverpool and former Red Jamie Carragher took a bit of a pot-shot at the striker.

The Express carries quotes from the exchange between the duo while they were appearing on Sky Sports.

It was Carra who started the questioning:

“Wayne, with the players you have brought in, there is a lot of excitement there.

“You’ve come in yourself, I have mentioned that, do you think you have got enough to actually win a derby game?”

As we all know, Everton have a torrid record in recent derbies and lost both of them last season. Rooney, for his part, didn’t actually say that they are confident of beating us but was expecting a better show than the last two games, at least.

“I think Everton have shown their ambition. We are trying to close that gap on them top teams.

“We want to be closer to them and we will keep going and when the derby comes we will be ready and hopefully we will do well.”

Right now, there is nothing separating the two clubs in terms of points and it will be interesting to see how the investment has worked out for Everton when compared to us.

The Toffees recently signed Gylfi Sigurdsson to help their side but it seems like Rooney is the driving force and even reportedly took a 50% wage cut on his £300,000-a-week at Manchester United, to rejoin Everton.

It will be interesting to note that if we sign a few more players before the end of the window, it would really help our chances of more than a top four finish. The Merseyside derby will be bigger than ever now and we have to be at our best to ensure the Toffees don’t end up on the winning side.