If survival comes from reacting to adversity, then Everton are too good to go down.
Allan’s dismissal had increased the odds of a fifth straight defeat for Frank Lampard. A climate-change protest, which the club seemed humiliatingly unable to deal with, had produced 14 minutes of stoppage time for Newcastle to exploit their one-man advantage.
Instead, they won. Seamus Coleman, who has given his footballing life to Goodison Park, won possession and a one-two between Alex Iwobi and Dominic Calvert-Lewin produced a beautifully-measured shot.
Lampard punched the air frantically – hurting his hand in the process – and, six minutes of ferocious defence later, the spectre of a first relegation since 1951 had, however, temporarily, been lifted. It may be only three points but the circumstances of the win might galvanise the becalmed blue side of the Mersey.
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Guehi, Abraham, Smith Rowe - The line-ups Southgate could experiment with for March friendlies17 March, 2022For the second time in two days, a game was stopped by a protestor tying himself to a goalpost. A young man, who in his glasses and shoulder-length hair had the look of a John Lennon, attached what appeared to be a bicycle lock around Asmir Begovic’s goalpost and his own throat. At the Arsenal vs Liverpool game on Wednesday, another protestor had used the handcuff method around his wrist.
Since his orange T-shirt indicated a website called “We Have No Future” you imagined it might be connected with Everton’s collapse towards the relegation places. However, below it was the slogan “Just Stop Oil”.
The attempts to release him were comically inept. After a while, a bolt-cutter of the size Desperate Dan might have employed was produced and cheered on as if Peter Reid and Andy Gray had emerged holding the FA Cup. Then, very slowly, he was hauled off, showing slightly more forward movement than some Everton players had hitherto produced.
The match was delayed for about 10 minutes and then for a few minutes more while VAR debated a reckless tackle by Allan on Allan Saint-Maximin. When the referee, Craig Pawson, returned from the monitor to show Allan a red card, the Brazilian left the field with rather less grace than the climate-change protestor.
That should have been Everton done. For a few minutes after the protest, they had recovered their balance rather more swiftly than Newcastle and produced their first big chance of the night; a superb shot on the run from Anthony Gordon that Martin Dubravka, leaping high to his right, had pushed away. Then came Allan’s tackle on Saint-Maximin and the match slumped back into the mediocrity it appeared to have settled for.
In the build-up to a game that mattered far more to Everton than Newcastle, the reaction of the home crowd was intensely debated. It was not anticipated anyone would emerge from the Gwladys End and padlock themselves to a goal but Sunderland’s collapse through the divisions was linked to the fact that their players seemed to dread playing in front of their own fans. Something similar has been happening to Everton.
The crowd matters more at Goodison than perhaps at any other Premier League stadium. It burns with a fierce passion but there have been too many disappointments over the seasons and they turn quickly. Before the protest, they had become sullen and restless.
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They were loud for the quarter of an hour it took them to realise this was a game Everton were not likely to win and astonishingly loud in the final few minutes when it dawned on them that something extraordinary had happened to their club.
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