For 28 minutes at the Stadium of Light this evening, it looked very much as though Everton had decided it was high time they got their season back on track. The first few games of the campaign had hinted at what they could be this term but if some erratic performances and then back-to-back defeats to Manchester City and Tottenham had deflated the spirits, here was the moment to lift them again.
The Blues were firmly in the driving seat and were looking good value for the kind of impressive away wins they ground out at Crystal Palace and Newcastle last term when David Moyes steered the club away from trouble on the back of top-eight calibre form.
Iliman Ndiaye had put Everton ahead with another irresistible piece of individual magic, Jack Grealish had struck the post and Thierno Barry missed the kind of sitter that will haunt his dreams.
And then, inexplicably, it all nearly evaporated as the Toffees lapsed into the same, tired version of themselves that has been a feature of the team for what feels like an eternity. The faces on the pitch change but the mental fragility, sloppy ball retention and suspect game management — on the pitch and from the touchline — remain the same.
By the end, the manager and his players were happy to have escaped the northeast with a point but it was a performance, riddled as it was with mistakes, uncertainty and baffling substitutions, that will have further alarmed supporters. And it was a result that heaps huge pressure on next weekend’s game against Fulham at Bramley-Moore Dock.
Conversation has for weeks centred around the full-back and centre-forward positions but it was the latter that came painfully to the fore as Barry, handed only his fourth league start since his £27m summer move from Villarreal, passed up the best chance he has had yet to finally grab his first goal for the club.
Later earning another immature booking, he sealed his fate as a premature substitution early in the second half — annoyingly, he had not played at all badly otherwise — but his latest misfire was made worse by a wholly ineffective display by his replacement, Beto, over the remainder of the piece. Moyes has hinted at trying other options; such experimentation in many areas of the side can’t come quickly enough.
Everton showed smatterings of it against Brighton and a good deal more at Wolves in August but on the whole they have struggled for fluidity and thrust for most of the season so far. Tonight, however, there was a degree of enterprise and purpose about them for the first third of the game that should have seen them push on to grab all three points.
Barry’s knockdown almost straight from kick-off fell invitingly to James Garner who fizzed a left-foot shot inches wide of the post from 20-odd yards out and at the end of a promising counter-attack involving Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Grealish a few minutes later, Barry had an effort charged down inside the box.
The breakthrough came for the visitors in the 15th minute, however, when Ndiaye took centre-stage in the way only he can. Barry had stood firm with him against Noah Sidiki, whose claims for a foul were waved off by referee Thomas Bramall, and Ndiaye skipped away from touchline with the ball, jinked past three red-and-white shirts on the edge of the penalty area and then curled a beautiful shot inside the far post.
It was a stunning goal and Grealish almost doubled the advantage seven minutes later with a rare but welcome effort of his own from the edge of the box but it skidded off the base of the upright.
Six minutes after that, Barry’s moment arrived with a sumptuous delivery from the left by Grealish that the Frenchman met at the far post as it sailed over the last defender’s head but from barely a couple of yards out he despatched the ball over the crossbar.
With it went all of Everton’s composure and self-belief and the moment seemed to galvanise a Sunderland team who have been the surprise package of the season so far. They came into the weekend riding high in the top four with a quarter of the season gone but while the visitors this evening had taken some air out of their balloon with a strong start, the Black Cats quickly began to exhibit the attitude that has seen them salvage more points from losing positions than any other in the top flight to this point.
Régis Le Bris’ men dominated the final 15 or so minutes of the first half enjoying well over 80% of the ball and after Lutsharel Geertruida had volleyed narrowly over from 20 yards, it took a couple of crucial interventions from Michael Keane to send the Toffees into half-time with their lead intact.
First he came across superbly to snuff out a chance for Wilson Isidor and then he smuggled the ball away from his goal line after Dan Ballard had come crashing into the six yard box trying to force the ball home.
It was all undone, though, within 43 seconds of the restart when Sunderland equalised. No one in a black shirt reacted quickly enough to a loose ball in their box and when it was laid back to Granit Xhaka, the Swiss drilled a low shot that James Tarkowski diverted past his own goalkeeper with an out-stretched boot.
And three minutes later, the contest was almost flipped on its head by another deflected shot. This time it was Enzo Le Fée whose speculative drive hit a team-mate and looked to be bouncing beyond Jordan Pickford before the Washington-born keeper stuck out a glove and pawed it away.
At that point, it felt as though there was only going to be one winner if Everton couldn’t find their feet and re-establish the control they had enjoyed for the first half hour. Moyes’s first response was to hook Barry, a harsh move no doubt rationalised by the yellow card he’d picked up in the first period and throw on Beto.
But when the Portuguese wasn’t watching aimless punts from his goalkeeper drift over his head to the grateful arms of Robin Roefs in the opposition goal, he failed to make any mark on the game.
More impacting was the loss of Ndiaye to injury just past the hour mark but instead of the pace and directness of Tyler Dibling or the driving power of Merlin Röhl, Moyes made the bizarre decision to introduce Dwight McNeil. The former Burnley man’s only other minutes thus far had come against Brighton, Wolves in the cup and Manchester City and he looked well off the pace in all of them. Tonight was no different.
Meanwhile, the home side huffed and puffed in search of the goal that would take them back to second in the table. Wilson Isidor might have delivered it with 13 minutes left but badly miscued Nordi Mukiele’s cross while Mukiele himself could have done better with Xhaka’s cross but he planted his header well over the crossbar.
For all the frustration around their performance for the preceding hour, though, it was Everton who had the chance to pinch the points right at the end after Vitalii Mykolenko had stung Roefs’ palms with a rasping effort from outside the area. (Damningly, that was the first shot the Blues had had in goal since Barry’s miss.)
Everton cleared a corner at one end and counter-attacked with Grealish who pinged a perfect ball for recent substitute Charly Alcaraz to race into a two-on-one situation with Idrissa Gueye but the Argentine was too slow in deed and thought and allowed himself to be crowded out before he could either shoot or lay it off to his team-mate.
If the disappointing but explainable results against and City and Spurs had dropped Everton back into the bottom half of the table, this was the chance to pull themselves to within three points of the European places.
In view of Sunderland’s form, a draw might have been deemed respectable before kick-off but you can’t escape the notion that Everton surrendered a position of dominance that would otherwise have delivered the win.
Now next weekend’s game is fraught with the danger that the anxiety of the last few years of relegation battles will come flooding back if things don’t go the Toffees’s way.