Fire and fury from over 35,000 Evertonians at kick-off. The sound of Manchester United’s voices full time. That was the story of Everton’s first big day as sworn enemies of the Premier League. Things have to get better from here on out if they don’t want to end the season as the Football League’s loudest resident.
If Everton play like this between now and May, there’s a good chance things will go well for Sean Dyche’s team. This was one of those results that didn’t necessarily reflect football.
Erik ten Hag’s United were quite miserable in the first half. Everton should have scored at least twice and perhaps more. However, United were strengthened after just 133 seconds by one of the best goals ever scored by a player in their colours.
Alejandro Garnacho’s bicycle kick was so spectacular and impossibly perfect that it will take a very long time for the memory of it to fade. Wayne Rooney once scored a similar stunning scissor kick for United against Manchester City. Well, this was better. At a distance.
That goal shouldn’t have been enough to keep United afloat for so long. Everton, driven by the energy of a home crowd reveling in perceived injustice, created a number of good chances but failed to convert. Andre Onana in the United goal had a very good day, as did their young player Kobbie Mainoo.
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The second half was different. It lacked the lead from the first and when referee John Brooks awarded United a penalty just before the hour mark on the advice of his VAR colleagues, it was pretty much over. Marcus Rashford, who was handed the ball by captain Bruno Fernandes, took the penalty beautifully and Fernandes gave Anthony Martial the third goal of the day moments later.
It must be said that United still have a lot of work to do to reach the improved levels of last season. They lack rhythm and coherence and yet we wait to see what the playing style chosen by Ten Hag really is. But they are starting to win games and that is something they can at least try to build on.
As for Everton, they really shouldn’t finish this season as one of the three worst teams in the division, even with the ten-point deduction awarded to them by the league. That said, they need to say goodbye to all this drama quickly and the best way to do that is by winning a game. Only then can Dyche and his players truly believe that escape is not beyond their reach. There is a match at Nottingham Forest next Sunday. They will undoubtedly take their sense of anger and betrayal back home with them, but on that occasion they really need to come back with something.
It was especially lively here at kick-off. Everton fans had said they would hold nothing back and were true to their collective word. Within two minutes and thirteen seconds, however, the mood changed slightly. It wouldn’t last long, but a silence, at least temporarily, descended on this part of Liverpool, save for the cheers of the Manchester crowd sitting in the car corner.
United’s position did not inspire confidence. Too many absentees. Too many players about whom too many questions are often asked.
But a goal came almost immediately and that kept them going through the first half in which Everton dominated.
The long diagonal pass from left to right came from the boot of Victor Lindelof and was collected comfortably high on the touchline by Rashford. When Diogo Dalot arrived on the overlap, Rashford’s task was simple and he passed the ball cleanly.
Dalot’s cross – his first of the match – was delivered flat and at pace, the kind of delivery usually met by someone’s forehead. However, the ball missed everyone, leaving only Garnacho at the far post and appearing to have come a yard or so too close to goal.
But a big step back away from goal improved his position and with some pretty amazing timing he managed to leap and hook the ball back over his head, across the goal and into Jordan Pickford’s top left corner. It was a goal that only looked better with every TV replay. The cross was undoubtedly struck too hard for that kind of finish. It just wasn’t set up for a bicycle kick. But Garnacho’s young confidence solved the first half of that equation and his excellent technique solved the second.
For a while, Everton and their crowd had settled down. It took a while for a response to arrive on the pitch, with the home crowd now needing a spark to bring their anger back to pre-match intensity.
Dyche’s team is in better form 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 that it simply cannot be overstated.
Eventually there was an improvement. United were unable to build on their early platform. At times – despite the energy and determination of young Mainoo – they again seemed to be on a very bad side. Too many long balls. Not enough structure.
Everton pushed and pushed, slowly building their own base in the United half. They were dominant in every way for the last twenty minutes of the half, except where it mattered: on the scoreboard.
Calvert-Lewin threatened twice 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 the left to parry a shot. Dwight McNeil was first to the rebound, but Onana got something of it too and when the loose ball threatened to trickle over the line, Mainno dived in to clear.
That was Onana’s best work of the half, but he should have been beaten twice more before the break. First, Abdoulaye Doucoure put 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 smashed wildly over the bar.
Towards half-time, with the home fans frustrated that their team had not scored, referee Brooks started to take a bit of heat. Not that he had done much wrong. This was a day when everyone who worked for the Premier League deigned to be honest. In any case, if Brooks’ life had been difficult in the first half, he had no idea what was about to happen.
Three or four minutes into the second period, Brooks booked Martial for what he thought was a dive over Ashley Young’s outstretched leg. But when VAR officials advised him to look at the pitchside monitor, he felt he was seeing a trip and awarded a penalty, from which Rashford scored his first United League goal since early September.
Was it a fine? Probably. Martial left his leg there as he drove into the penalty area, but so did Young and he appeared to trip the Frenchman. On second thought, it was probably a foul and also a dive, if such a thing is possible.
So now Everton were back on the ground, put there by one of the greatest goals ever seen on this ground and then a penalty. It wasn’t their day, it seemed.
It felt like something had to be done for them, and quickly. United remains vulnerable so it was not inconceivable that one goal could become two.
What Everton needed was the first and although Gueye pulled off a spectacular save from Onana from distance within a minute of the penalty, they found themselves in a becalmed spell that did them no favors at all. Indeed it was United who struck next to seal the match, with substitute Facundo Pellistri and Fernandes combining in Martial, who lifted the ball comfortably over Pickford.
