Fire and fury from more than 35,000 Evertonians at kick-off. The sound of Manchester United voices at full-time. That was the story of Everton’s first big day as sworn enemies of the Premier League. It must get better from here if they are not to end the season as the Football League’s noisiest resident.
In truth, if Everton play like this between now and May the chances are Sean Dyche’s team will be okay. This was one of those results that did not necessarily reflect the football.
Erik ten Hag’s United were pretty dreadful in the first half. Everton should have scored at least twice and maybe more times. United, though, had been bolstered by one of the best goals ever scored by a player in their colours after only 133 seconds. Alejandro Garnacho’s overhead kick was so spectacularly and improbably perfect that its memory will take an awfully long time to fade. Wayne Rooney once scored a similarly wonderful scissor kick for United against Manchester City. Well this was better. By a distance.
That goal should not have been enough to sustain United for as long as it did. Everton, driven on by the energy of a home crowd gorging on perceived injustice, created a number of good chances but took none of them. Andre Onana in the United goal had a very good day and so did their young holding player Kobbie Mainoo.
The second half was different. It lacked the edge of the first and once referee John Brooks awarded a penalty to United on the advice of his VAR colleagues just before the hour, this was pretty much done. Marcus Rashford, handed the ball by captain Bruno Fernandes, took the penalty beautifully and later on Fernandes supplied Anthony Martial with the third goal of the day.
United, it must be said, still have much work to do in order to reach last season’s improved levels. They lack rhythm and cohesion and still we wait to see what Ten Hag’s chosen style of play really is. But they are starting to win games and that is something on which they can at least try to build.
As for Everton, they really should not end this season as one of the worst three teams in the division, even with the ten-point deduction bestowed on them by the league. Having said that, they must move on from all this drama soon and the best way to do that is to win a game. Only then can Dyche and his players really believe that an escape is not beyond them. Next up is a game at Nottingham Forest next Sunday. They will doubtless carry their sense of anger and betrayal all the way to the midlands but on that occasion they really need to come back with something,
Certainly it was lively here at kick-off. Everton’s fans had said they would hold nothing back and were true to their collective word. Within two minutes and 13 seconds, though, the mood changed somewhat. It wasn’t to last but, temporarily at least, a silence descended on this part of Liverpool, save the cheering of those from Manchester housed in the car corner.
United’s line-up didn’t inspire confidence. Too many absentees. Too many players about whom too many questions are often asked.
But a goal arrived almost immediately and that sustained them through an opening half that Everton went on to dominate.
The long diagonal pass from left to right came from the boot of Victor Lindelof and was gathered comfortably high up the touchline by Rashford. With Diogo Dalot arriving on the overlap, Rashford’s task was simple and he duly moved the ball on.
Dalot’s cross – his first of the game – was delivered flat and at pace, the kind of delivery that is usually met by somebody’s forehead. The ball missed everybody, though, which left only Garnacho at the far post and he seemed to have moved a yard or so too close to goal.
But a big stride backwards away from goal improved his position and with quite astonishing timing he managed to leap and hook the ball back over his head, across goal and in to Jordan Pickford’s top left hand corner. It was a goal that only looked better with each passing TV replay. The cross was struck too firmly for that kind of finish, surely. It just wasn’t set up for a bicycle kick. But Garnacho’s young confidence solved the first half of that equation and his outstanding technique solved the second.
For a while Everton and their crowd were becalmed. A response took a while to arrive on the field while the home crowd were now needing a spark to bring their fury back to the intensity of pre-match levels.
Dyche’s team have a better shape about them these days. Jack Harrison, on loan from Leeds, gives Everton balance on the left while the return of Dominic Calvert-Lewin up front is so important to their prospects it simply can’t be over-stated.
Eventually improvement did arrive. United could not build on their early platform. At times – despite the energy and resoluteness of young Mainoo – they once again looked a very poor side. Too many long balls. Not enough structure.
Everton pushed and pushed and slowly built a base of their own in the United half. For the last twenty minutes of the half they were dominant in every way apart from where it mattered, on the scoreboard.
Twice Calvert-Lewin threatened with his head, once from a cross from the left and then from the other side. United goalkeeper Onana saved one while the other flew over.
Onana also saved from Calvert-Lewin in the 32nd minute, diving low to his left to parry a shot. Dwight McNeil was first to the rebound but Onana got something on that too and as the loose ball threatened to trickle over the line, Mainno dived in to clear.
That represented Onana’s best work of the half but he should have been beaten on two other occasions before the interval. First Abdoulaye Doucoure side-footed a low cross wide when he simply had to work the goalkeeper and then, a matter of three minutes later, the same player set up Idrissa Gueye and he slashed wildly over the bar.
By half-time, with the home fans frustrated that their team had not scored, referee Brooks was starting to feel a little heat. Not that he had done much wrong. This was a day when anybody who worked for the Premier League was deigned to be fair game. Anyway, if Brooks’ life had been difficult in the first half he had no idea what was coming.
Three or four minutes in to the second period, Brooks booked Martial for what he thought was a dive over the outstretched leg of Ashley Young. But when the VAR officials advised him to look at the pitch side monitor, he felt he spotted a trip and awarded a penalty from which Rashford scored his first United league goal since early September.
Was it a penalty? Probably. Martial left his leg there as he drove in to the penalty area but then so did Young and he seemed to trip the Frenchman. It was, on refection, probably a foul and also a dive, if such a thing is possible.
So now Everton were back on the floor, put there by one of the best goals ever seen on this ground and, then, a penalty. It was not their day, it seemed.
It felt as though they needed something to happen for them and quickly. United remain vulnerable so it was not inconceivable that one goal could become two.
What Everton needed was the first and though Gueye brought a spectacular save from Onana from distance within a minute of the penalty, they then fell in to a becalmed period that did them no favours at all. Indeed it was United who struck next to end the game, substitute Facundo Pellistri and Fernandes combining to play in Martial who lifted the ball comfortably over Pickford.