Depleted Everton cling on for another precious win

Setting aside for a moment the fact that Everton haven’t lost at the Amex Community Stadium since that hugely controversial game in October 2019 when Lee Mason and Andy Madley combined to potentially rob Marco Silva’s Blues of three important points, playing Brighton at the moment is not an attractive proposition.

Playing a man down against a side as possession-heavy as Fabian Hürzeler’s just makes it that much harder and it’s to Everton’s enormous credit that the Seagulls finished this match with just one shot on target having had 70% of the ball and a numerical advantage for almost 15 minutes after Orel Mangala was forced off with a knee injury.

For the committed travelling Evertonians, there was precious little to savour from an attacking perspective but they did witness David Moyes’s men follow up last Sunday’s uplifting 3-2 win over Tottenham by grinding out another priceless victory, thanks to Iliman Ndiaye’s penalty late in the first half. And in our position, the three points were all that mattered.

The circumstances were fortuitous, Jöel Veltman literally handing the Senegal international the chance to put the visitors ahead, but having lost Dominic Calvert-Lewin to a hamstring injury after just 12 minutes, Everton were due a little luck. Then, having grabbed the lead, they did almost everything they could to ensure they didn’t relinquish it in the face of a second-half barrage from Brighton that met a stubborn brick wall of dark grey jerseys, even when Moyes was left unable to replace Mangala because he had used all three substitution windows.

The manager, all smiles after his 700th match as a Premier League manager, joked to Gary Lineker afterwards that the second half felt like it was “about two hours long” but was full of admiration for “a hell of a defensive performance” from his new charges. He acknowledged that he was seeing the improvement in his team’s play as he seeks to build on the defensive resilience that his predecessor had instilled and the fans will have seen that too, even if there is plenty of work still to do in that department.

Moyes will be hopeful of making additions before the transfer deadline on 3rd February and that imperative will have been intensified by two new injuries and the news on Friday that Dwight McNeil will probably need surgery on his injured knee. So, too, will the glaring lack of quality exposed in the performances of Abdoulaye Doucouré and Beto whose poor ball retention ensured that what little attacking opportunities Everton had on the day, particularly on the break in the second half, were wasted.

Just as well then that the defence largely kept the door locked at the other end, ensuring that Jordan Pickford didn’t have to make a save of note, although Georginio Rutter came within a whisker of wiping out Ndiaye’s spot-kick midway through the second half.

This was billed as a clash of wildly differing styles but the contrasts weren’t as glaring as they would have been under Sean Dyche and if they were, it was mostly in terms of execution. Moyes, naming an unchanged line-up from the one that had started against Spurs, had clearly instructed his players to try and retain possession a bit and play out from the back where possible but they often struggled and occasionally played their way into trouble.

Hürzeler’s side, meanwhile, were slick and looked expertly coached in that regard, particularly in the early going where they repeatedly drew Everton in and then attempted to release Kauro Mitoma and Tariq Lamptey down their left with a rapid increase in tempo and balls down the channel. The full-back caused early concern in the Blues’ defence when he romped into oceans of space behind Jesper Lindstrøm and Jake O’Brien but his cross-cum-shot flew across the box and out the other side.

Joao Pedro then headed a Lamptey cross over before Calvert-Lewin visibly pulled up clutching his thigh and was replaced by Beto. The Portuguese had an opportunity almost immediately when he headed on for Doucouré but when the return ball came to him via a square centre from the right, he failed to do react quickly enough to do anything with it and the chance evaporated.

In the 28th minute, Lamptey skipped away from Lindstrøm and drew a foul from the Dane, who was booked, but the free-kick came to nothing and, 10 minutes later, the deciding moment of the game arrived. Beto and Veltman challenged for the ball as it ran towards the byline, the defender appearing to have simply conceded a corner but when Video Assistant Referee, Graham Scott, advised the on-field official, Tim Robinson, to consult the pitch-side monitor, a penalty for handball seemed to be the likely outcome. In truth, while Brighton protested and Veltman continued to whinge about the decision after the game, handball for visibly sweeping it behind as he fell was the only justifiable decision.

Ndiaye stepped up and though Bart Verbruggen guessed the right way, the penalty was struck with enough precision to sneak into the bottom corner and Everton had a precious advantage that held until the interval after Carlos Baleba had driven wide of the target from distance in first-half stoppage time. The Everton man was booked in ridiculous fashion for celebrating the goal by flapping his wings in response to taunts from the home fans and the Seagulls’ players were still aggrieved by the time the final whistle went, when a bout of “handbags” broke out and a number of players had to be separated.

In between was another of those superb defensive stands of which Dyche would have been proud. The scale of the task was evident from the first whistle in the second period as Brighton immediately stepped up their offensive on the Toffees rearguard. Veltman miscued Mitoma’s cut-back horribly off target but when the Japanese took matters into his own hands shortly afterwards, he just missed the far post with an attempted curler after cutting inside on his right foot.

It continued to be all Brighton as Doucouré’s poor footwork spurned a rare counter-attacking chance for Everton and after a Joao Pedro effort was deflected up and Pickford helped it onto the roof of the net, Baleba belted an unerring effort from 25 yards that Jarrad Branthwaite got in the way of to head behind while Yanis Ayari sliced a half-volley over the goal.

Rutter had been introduced as a half-time sub but it wasn’t until the 69th minute that he had his first and only real look at goal when he held Branthwaite off a little too easily and hammered a half-volley that whistled past the upright with Pickford diving desperately to his right.

Beto almost pounced on a poor back-pass but Verbruggen beat him to it in the nick of time and the striker later fired into the side-netting with Doucouré an option his right in the six-yard box while Welbeck drifted a direct free-kick wide and Baleba again missed the target with a volley from outside the box.

As if the second half hadn’t been a backs-against-the-wall grind already, Everton were depleted further by the loss of Mangala who stayed down following an awkward landing during a challenge but, thankfully, both Beto and the outstanding Idrissa Gueye were able to shake off knocks of their own to ensure that the Blues didn’t have to see out the game with only nine players.

Naturally, Brighton pushed for an equaliser into the closing stages, which included eight minutes of time added on for stoppages but unlike in this fixture last season, there would be no last-gasp heroics from the Seagulls. Instead, Everton, exemplified by James Tarkowski’s late block at his near post to deny Mitoma one last time, held firm and claimed three massive points.

With successive wins now under his belt, Moyes can justifiably say that the Aston Villa game came too soon for him to enjoy a verifiable new-manager bounce. Again, this was the kind of performance that, with a bit more fortune or composure up front, might have yielded surprise wins for Dyche over Chelsea and Manchester City but there are clear signs of improvement across all aspects of Everton’s game with the new man in charge.

The priority now shifts to the transfer market where the need to do business has been heightened but the manager and the recruitment team can at least do so breathing a little easier with a seven-point gap between the Blues and the bottom three.

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