Happy New Year? It almost never is with Everton. 2017 was the last time the Blues kicked off a new calendar year with a victory and in the years since they’ve been given home games to start the year on seven occasions and lost all of them.
Tuesday’s surprising and impressive win at Nottingham Forest promised a change to that miserable trend; the reality, however, was just more of the same with a performance and result entirely in keeping with the mercurial nature of the Blues' current season to date.
From the delay in the home team joining their opponents in the tunnel as the increasingly needless siren whined away on repeat on the PA to the final blast on referee Anthony Taylor’s whistle and boos from those Evertonians who remained inside Hill Dickinson Stadium, this was an almost complete shit-show from Everton.
Lazy and sloppy in possession, let down by their team captain, James Tarkowski, and uninspired by David Moyes’s curious team-selection decisions, they were bullied, out-fought, out-thought and out-run by a Brentford outfit who were operating on two days' less rest than their hosts.
There was nothing in Keith Andrews’s side’s tedious goalless draw with Tottenham at the Gtech Stadium on Thursday — or, indeed, their seven away defeats already this season — that hinted at their rampage by the docks this afternoon. By the same token, Toffees fans came into this first of three successive home fixtures hopeful of making further gains on the Premier League’s top five.
They should have known better; this is Everton after all, and only a late consolation goal by Thierno Barry avoided a repeat of the 4-1 humbling at home suffered against Newcastle in late November. Once again, the Blues felt wide open and vulnerable at times and were carved open far too easily.
Save for an assured cameo off the bench by 18-year-old Harrison Armstrong, the bit of fight shown by Beto as a half-time substitute for Tyler Dibling and a couple of moments of magic from Jack Grealish, there was nothing positive to come out of this shameful Everton display.
Tim Iroegbunam was as awful as he was promising at the City Ground a few days ago; James Garner, the undoubted star of Tuesday’s 2-0 triumph in the East Midlands was largely ineffective and outshone by Mikkel Damsgaard; Dwight McNeil was atrocious nominally playing in the No 10 role; Dibling, when not hung out to dry by non-existent support from any team-mates, was a non-entity on one flank; while Grealish, at least for the first hour or so, was peripheral to the action on the other.
Then there was the defence where a visibly unfit Michael Keane was rushed back and Moyes tried once again to bang the square peg of Jake O’Brien into the round hole at right-back while Tarkowski seemed to expend more energy and focus on his personal spat with Igor Thiago than his responsibility of leading the back line.
The result was a shocking first-half display from the Blues that somehow got worse before Beto gave them a sliver of hope… only for Thiago to romp away and grab a deserved hat-trick with two minutes of the 90 remaining.
Everton’s start was encouraging enough. Showing some early tenacity in the press that quickly evaporated as the Bees settled into the game, they pounced on a loose ball in the opposition half, Grealish flicked the ball to McNeil and his low shot prompted a fingertip save from Caoimhín Kelleher to divert it past his post. From the ensuing corner, Thiago had to head Tarkowski’s header away from his own goal line.
But it was Tarkowski who was infuriatingly at fault a few minutes later at the other end, gifting possession to Brentford with a suicide ball into traffic that was intercepted by Vitaly Janelt who crossed smartly for Thiago to prod past Jordan Pickford with a first-time finish.
With the first goal being so important in the modern Premier League, Everton needed to get back level quickly but, having done well to intercept a pass outside the Brentford area and borne down on Kelleher’s goal, Iroegbunam scuffed an ugly shot wide when he simply had to hit the target at least.
Barry headed tamely at the keeper and Dibling lacked the confidence to get a shot away later in the half but Brentford continued to look the hungrier and more decisive in their play.
An awful passage of Everton play was disrupted in one half and the Bees counter-attacked into the other in the 37th minute, with O’Brien blocking Kevin Schade’s shot behind for a corner before Damsgaard’s quick cross to the same player following Grealish’s giveaway ended with Pickford having to make a key save to keep the game tight at the halfway stage.
Moyes’s response to the dreadful fare he’d witnessed in the first period was to throw caution — and common sense — to the wind, by hooking both Dibling and McNeil and throwing Merlin Röhl and Beto on for the second. Barry, who had had a diving header saved in first-half stoppage time, remained on the field in a rare two-man forward line but the switch robbed Everton of what shape they’d had to that point.
And they were 2-0 down before the changes made at the interval could have an effect. Janelt delivered a corner onto the head of Nathan Collins and, like Micky van de Van and Malick Thiaw before him, he had the simple task of heading past Pickford from close range.
In the blink of an eye, Everton had completely imploded as a hopeful punt forward was dealt with by the visiting defence, Iroegbunam meekly gave the ball up to Matias Jensen near the halfway line and Schade held O’Brien off in the box long enough for Thiago to arrive and bury a shot that made it 3-0 with just five minutes of the second half played.
The hosts finally started to show some life again with an hour gone as Tarkowski tested Kelleher with a header that the Irishman acrobatically palmed over but it was Beto who pulled a goal back midway through the half to set up what could have been a grandstand finish to the game but ultimately wasn’t.
Grealish did superbly to out-fox his marker and whip in a dangerous cross that Beto guided into the far corner with an accomplished headed finish to make it 3-1.
Frustrated by Brentford’s spoiling tactics and Taylor’s fussy and erratic refereeing, Everton just couldn’t build on that platform, though.
Iroegbunam gave the ball away again and Pickford was able to get behind a deflected Thiago shot at one end while Garner collected a crisp pass by Armstrong in the Brentford area but saw his shot charged down at the other and Keane couldn’t steer another chance on target from Röhl’s cross. Pickford was needed again to stop Schade's volley.
And any hope of a dramatic late comeback was extinguished in the 88th minute. Everton were caught with everybody in the Bees’ half when Röhl’s limp delivery was cut out and Thiago was sent clear into a one-on-one showdown with Pickford that that Brazilian won by clipping the ball over the keeper and into the empty net.
Grealish’s clever footwork and chipped cross for Barry to nod home a second for the Toffees in stoppage time was worthy of better circumstances and will hopefully give Moyes food for thought when it comes to the on-loan star’s position in the team but it was scant consolation on another awful day by the Mersey.
Wednesday against bottom side Wolves offers the chance to quickly atone for this afternoon's disgrace but the manager will have plenty to ponder in the meantime, not least how open his team continues to be on home turf following heavy losses now against Spurs, Newcastle and an unspectacular but well-drilled and energetic Brentford.