At the start of the season, you could have got ridiculously long odds on a mid-April clash between Brentford and Everton being a “six-pointer” in terms of the Champions League qualification picture. And yet a team that had to be dragged out of relegation danger by David Moyes last year travelled this afternoon to one tipped for the drop this term following the departure of their much-revered manager and some of their best players, with three precious points in the offing.
There was a moment a quarter of an hour from the end where Everton, having recovered from a somnolent opening that saw them a goal down before three minutes had elapsed, could have edged their noses in front but Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall was, uncharacteristically, found wanting when clean through.
But the midfielder atoned superbly with a dramatic equaliser to earn a vital draw that broke the Bees’ hearts in stoppage-time and underlined the never-say-die attitude that runs through this Moyes outfit. It was the third injury-time goal the Scot’s side have scored this season and it echoed Beto’s leveller at Brighton at the end of January.
In the final reckoning, either side could have won it. Brentford twice rattled the frame of Jordan Pickford’s goal and both he and Caoimhin Kelleher were called upon to make smart saves. And while the victories elsewhere for Bournemouth and Brighton mean that it doesn’t quite feel tantamount to a win, it’s the visitors who will go away the happier with the final score.
With all the optimism that the Toffees carried into this game, it was so very Everton that they would shoot themselves in the foot before the contest had even got going. The Blues had gone into the unwanted three-week hiatus for internationals and the FA Cup with strong momentum having won three of their last four while three successive draws had hinted that Brentford’s improbable charge for Europe was stalling.
On the early evidence, the break appeared to have favoured Keith Andrews whose charges looked re-energised and hungry in the early going. They benefited hugely from some rust in the Everton ranks, however, as both James Tarkowski and Vitalii Mykolenko watched as a long ball forward bounced between them allowing Dango Outtara to prod it into the path of Kevin Schade.
The German rounded Pickford, was caught on the heel by the goalkeeper’s out-stretched foot and was sent sprawling to the turf, leaving rookie referee Farai Hallam no choice but to award a penalty.
Pickford initially cheated to his left before guessing the right way but couldn’t get far enough across to get a hand to Igor Thiago’s penalty and it was 1-0 to the hosts.
Importantly, the Blues, who were unchanged from the side that started against Chelsea, didn’t take long to wake up. Idrissa Gueye seized on a loose ball in midfield but Beto’s shot was deflected behind in the ninth minute and, ten minutes later, Jarrad Branthwaite raked a left-foot shot narrowly wide from 25 yards out.
Mid-way through the half, Keheller was called into action for the first time to deny Gueye’s low shot and then get a hand to Beto’s effort on the rebound before the flag went up for a hair’s breadth offside call on the striker.
However, within three further minutes, Everton were level thanks in part to good work by Jake O’Brien near the byline in holding off Keane Lewis-Potter and knocking the ball back to Gueye. The Senegalese stood a perfect cross up for Beto in the six-yard box and he buried a simple header beyond Kelleher to make it 1-1.
Despite regaining parity and growing in stature as the first period wore on, Everton remained vulnerable at times in the face of Brentford’s directness and physicality. No one closed Mathias Jensen down on the Bees’ left, allowing him to cut back onto his right foot and force a terrific save from Pickford at his near post with a rasping drive.
Shortly afterwards, Schade met a wicked Jensen corner and thumped a header off the crossbar and Branthwaite made a vital block to prevent Thiago turning home the rebound from close range.
Just as they had done so in the first half, Brentford began the second on the front foot and when James Garner was very harshly adjudged to have fouled Outtara and was booked, it gave the Bees a free-kick opportunity in a dangerous position. Jensen’s delivery met Nathan Collins’s run across his marker but, thankfully, the defender’s header hit the bar.
And Branthwaite was in the right place to make another critical block in front of goal to deny Thiago as Everton’s back line wobbled somewhat under the pressure.
Having weathered that storm, though, the tide turned in Everton’s favour as they established some control over the game and they came within inches of taking the lead at the end of a 65th-minute counter-attack.
Iliman Ndiaye found himself one-on-one with a defender on the edge of the box after being played down the line by Dewsbury-Hall and jinked inside just enough to get his shot away but though it took a heavy deflection, Kelleher managed to divert it away with his trailing foot.
The match perhaps pivoted on a moment with 17 minutes left when Dewsbury-Hall expertly judged the flight of Pickford’s drop kick into the Brentford half and found himself behind both Collins and Sepp van den Berg with just Kelleher in front of him.
Inexplicably, he opted not to shoot and, instead, tried to swivel and hook the ball around the keeper with his left foot which gave Collins enough time to recover and block his strike.
Four minutes later, after an attack-minded triple change by Moyes that saw Thierno Barry, Tyrique George and Tim Iroegbunam introduced for Beto, Dwight McNeil and Gueye, Brentford re-took the lead.
Michael Kayode powered off the touchline past George and feinted inside Garner which opened up space for a shot with the outside of his boot that took the merest of deflections off Thiago to take it past Pickford’s left glove and into the net.
That left Everton scrambling to find an equaliser in the final quarter of an hour. George lashed one shot well wide then stung Kelleher’s palms with a powerful effort with two minutes left of the 90 but the Toffees’ persistence paid off with 91 minutes on the clock as the rain began to come down at the Gtech Stadium.
Mykolenko’s cross was too deep for Barry but Ndiaye collected it on the Everton right and laid it back to O’Brien. The Irishman’s low shot was repelled by Kayode but the ricochet fell invitingly to Dewsbury-Hall who rapped it in emphatically from the angle to send the visiting Blues into rapture in the corner of the ground.
It was a well-deserved equaliser and proof that even though neither KDH nor Ndiaye had had their best days, they could still produce when it mattered to help drag the team back to level terms of salvage another big away point.
A victory here would have been glorious but the bottom line is that, under the circumstances with the two teams neck-and-neck in the table, this was a “must not lose” game for Everton and, in that sense, it was a job well enough done.
Dewsbury-Hall may well rue his strange moment of indecision that could have put the Blues in the driving seat with less than a quarter of the game to go but the way that Brentford played and in the context of the awful reverse fixture at Bramley-Moore Dock in January, this was a decent result.