Almost as if Pep Guardiola were exacting punishing and unrelenting retribution on Everton for inflicting upon him the joint heaviest defeat of his managerial career, Manchester City have made Goodison Park something of a home away from home over the past eight years.
Granted they might well have been held to a draw in February 2022 when one of the most egregious derelictions of duty imaginable by a Video Assistant Referee allowed Rodri to get away with a blatant handball but, including the League Cup quarter-final in March 2021, Guardiola’s team have won every game they have played at the Grand Old Lady since Ronald Koeman’s men hammered them 4-0 in January 2017.
In that time, the Toffees have scored just four goals against City at home; today, the width of a post and a reflex save by Stefan Ortega kept them scoreless but their hopes of at least grinding out another hugely creditable goalless draw against one of the best teams in the division fell apart with the second-half departures of James Tarkowski and Idrissa Gueye.
A tight game was goalless and finely balanced when the team captain was forced off seven minutes into the second half with a hamstring injury and the Blues’ midfield machine, carrying a booking since the 62nd minute and suffering from cramp, was withdrawn with 11 to go. The effect of both changes was the almost complete loss of the defensive solidity that had characterised a dogged Everton display to that point, with the midfield shape falling apart and Michael Keane, Tarkowski’s questionable replacement, sowing uncertainty into a hitherto impervious rearguard.
That David Moyes didn’t opt to move the impressive Jake O’Brien inside and bring on a natural right-back in the form of Nathan Patterson is something the manager will ponder as he surveys the aftermath of his third Premier League defeat since returning as Everton boss. Perhaps erring on the side of experience or wanting to give the veteran defender one last chance to try and earn a new contract with the Blues, Moyes went with Keane and will hopefully have reached a definitive verdict that the 32-year-old needs to be moved on this summer.
Visibly ring-rusty from weeks on the sidelines as he approaches the end of a nine-year career at Goodison, Keane was a calamitous introduction. He was fortunate not to be responsible for the visitors breaking the deadlock in the 72nd and 82nd minutes before being caught lead-footed at his near post and oblivious to the threat behind him in the 84th as Nico O'Reilly stole in in front of him to put City ahead.
Mateo Kovacic added a second in stoppage time to put a very harsh complexion on the scoreline from the hosts’ perspective but Everton’s resistance had been definitively broken by the opener and there was unlikely to have been a way back anyway.
In what will have been one of Armando Broja’s last few chances to prove he is worthy a permanent move at the end of the season, the Chelsea man was handed another start at the expense of Beto in what was an unchanged side from the one that lined up against Nottingham Forest last weekend.
Broja had yet to register a shot on target for Everton before today and his wait goes on after leading the line for another hour today. Instead, it was Moyes’s centre-halves and a welcome return to the Toffees’ threat from set-pieces that almost put them ahead with chances in either half.
Everton had started with the requisite organisation and tenacity that would give them the platform to perhaps edge the contest over the 90 minutes but, unsurprisingly, they lacked the quality to make inroads through City’s back line.
The excellent Vitalii Mykolenko flighted a lovely ball to the back post early on but when Abdoulaye Doucouré got in Jack Harrison’s way, the chance to create something evaporated while, at the other end, Matheus Nunes forced the first save of note of the game with a low drive that Jordan Pickford palmed behind.
Clear-cut opportunities were at a premium but with half an hour gone, James Garner curled a free-kick into the danger zone where Tarkowski did well to hold off Bernardo Silva and steer a header goal-wards but was dismayed to see the ball bounce off the woodwork before being hacked clear.
Then, shortly before half-time, Kevin de Bruyne collected Nunes’s cut-back and lined up one of his trademark side-foot shots searching out the bottom corner but O’Brien did brilliantly to stoop and get a head on it to divert it behind for a corner.
Moyes will, no doubt, have been satisfied with his team’s effort over the first 45 minutes and his charges almost grabbed the lead two minutes into the second half. After Iliman Ndiaye had been fouled by Bernardo Silva, Tarkowski nodded a deep free-kick on where Jarrad Branthwaite had ghosted in untracked but his attempt to steer a header beyond the keeper was thwarted when Ortega thrust a glove into its path and batted it away.
A minute later, Ndiaye couldn’t get purchase on a Harrison cross and Doucouré’s follow-up shot was blocked behind while Broja had two chances to out-muscle Joško Gvardiol on his way to goal but lost the battle to the Croatian on both occasions. Meanwhile, exhibiting the kind of tricky footwork the bulk of his Blues career suggests he doesn't really possess, Doucouré expertly engineered space for a strong left-footed shot but Ortega parried it away for a corner.
Everton had lost Tarkowski by this point, the stalwart defender having pulled a hamstring reaching for a ball that was dropping over his head and been replaced by Keane. The implications of that, combined with the departure of Gueye after he had taken a yellow card for a professional foul on the counter-attacking Savinho, would be felt in the closing stages but, initially, chances still felt the Blues’ way.
Beto, on for Broja, spurned one opening by selfishly getting off a tame shot rather than teeing up the onrushing Doucouré and Ndiaye flashed an attempted curler wide while, for City, İlkay Gündoğan and Savinho had tested Pickford with efforts from central positions around the edge of the box.
As long as the game had been played more on Everton’s terms — tight, with the onus on City trying to engineer chances on the overlap from wide — the better things had looked for Moyes’s men but the more frenetic and open things became, the more it suited Guardiola’s side.
As such, the triple change that Moyes made with 11 minutes left, where Harrison Ndiaye and Gueye made way for Dwight McNeil, Charly Alcaraz and Tim Iroegbunam, dismantled what remained of a tightly-regimented defensive shape and the reigning Champions capitalised.
Omar Marmoush had almost been let in by a dreadful error by Keane who allowed a high ball to bounce in front of him and was bailed out by his goalkeeper who made a smart save to deny the Egyptian. But another couple of minutes later it was 1–0 to City.
Not for the first time, Nunes was allowed to get to the byline and with a host of blue jerseys static in the centre, O’Reilly ghosted in to slide home from close range in the 84th minute.
Eight minutes later, with Everton beaten and the result beyond doubt, the visitors rubbed salt into the wounds when Jeremy Doku found Gündoğan in the box and he laid the ball off for Kovacic to crash home a second.
Again, the final score was brutal on a Toffees team that had more than been in the game for three quarters of this contest but, as has been the case so often in this fixture, there was always a fear that they could grind Everton down or produce a telling moment thanks to their embarrassment of riches on the bench.
Whether they would have ever made the breakthrough had Tarkowski and Gueye remained on the pitch we’ll never know and the competitive performance that preceded the late collapse will come as scant consolation to Evertonians.
In the ongoing squad analysis process ahead of a big summer of rebuilding, however, it could well be instructive — again given the disappointing showings from the likes of Broja and Keane and poor cameos from Iroegbunam and Alcaraz.
In that sense, Moyes and his team will have yet more food for thought. For Blues fans, however, the hope is that the days of routinely being outclassed by City will eventually come to an end. Unfortunately, it might yet take a while…