The Joe Thomas Everton verdict from the Etihad Stadium for the Premier League match against Manchester City
Joe Thomas is the Everton FC correspondent for the Liverpool ECHO. He follows the Blues home and away, providing match reports, analysis and insight into events at Goodison Park, Finch Farm and beyond. Joe spent more than a decade covering news on Merseyside, working on award-winning investigations and extensively covering matters related to the Hillsborough tragedy - including the recent criminal prosecutions. Always grateful for tips and feedback, he can be contacted at joe.thomas@reachplc.com and on Twitter via @joe_thomas18
Everton fell to a 2-0 defeat at Manchester City
Everton fell to a 2-0 defeat at Manchester City(Image: Getty Images)
View Image
Everton’s emotions on the final whistle told the story of this game.
James Tarkowski exchanged words with Erling Haaland before Pep Guardiola intervened in the centre circle. Jordan Pickford, the last player off the pitch, shook his head and gave a rueful smile as he stepped off the turf. David Moyes applauded the away end while looking as though his thoughts were elsewhere.
They probably were. A glance at the 2-0 scoreline would give the impression of a predictable affair, one of an hour of stubbornness from Everton before the might of Manchester City proved too much for them to handle. The reality is somewhat different. This was a tale of the Blues’ progress and its limitations.
Author avatar
Author avatar
For an 60 minutes, Everton matched their illustrious hosts almost blow-for-blow as the sides exchanged chances. The Etihad has yielded valuable draws in recent years for Everton but they were built on rearguard defensive displays. A result felt possible here for two thirds of the match and did so because Everton presented a genuine threat to Gianluigi Donnarumma’s goal.
The best chance of the match fell to Beto in the opening 10 minutes. Iliman Ndiaye - more on him to come - seized on a loose Nathan Ake pass and surged into the box before squaring to the Guinea-Bissau international. The striker is not having much luck right now and the favourable evaluation of this incident was that he was stretching to make a firm connection with a ball that was just too far in front of him for him to control the finish.
One positive from this match was that he caused Ake and Rueben Dias issues in the opening 45 minutes and linked up well with Ndiaye, who played him behind the defence on the half hour. The angle was challenging and he shot wide of both Donarumma and the far post before the flag went up but, had he found the back of the net, replays suggested the call would require careful checking.
Not content with supplying chances for others, Ndiaye forced Donnarumma into a good save minutes later after wriggling into the box and letting fly. With the game seemingly gone after Erling Haaland’s second half brace the Senegal star remained irrepressible, beating Oscar Bobb to the byline and crossing for substitute Merlin Rohl to head into the side netting.
In the second half, the hosts’ camera network picked out Jack Grealish watching on from hospitality and it was tough not to wonder ‘what if’ the playmaker had been on the pitch against his parent club. And that points to the position Everton and Moyes find themselves in right now. Just like at Anfield, this is a team that has shown signs it can spend large periods of games going toe-for-toe with some of the best.
Content Image
Content Image
But to come away with a big result it is just lacking that stardust and ruthlessness. On Saturday afternoon, the calmness of Grealish could have provided much-needed composure on the hour, when Everton lost this game on the first occasion they switched off. Even without him, Ndiaye showcased he has the ability to menace anyone, while another major figure, Jordan Pickford, made good saves from Jeremy Doku and twice from Savinho before Haaland sprung into life. This match ended in a personal battle between Pickford and Haaland, the England number one making two fine stops to prevent the forward from a second hat-trick in a week after his treble for Norway against Israel.
The damage was already done, though. Everton had started the second half well and caused City too many problems to allow them to sit on the ball and dominate possession - the over-riding emotion in the home stands was not a sense of inevitability a sky blue tide would eventually crash over Everton, but of frustration as the away side fought them as equals.
But then, just in a period of the match when a Grealish foul might have helped to break the game up, the visitors switched off. Phil Foden was given time and space in a seemingly harmless position but used it to devastating effect, sending Nico O’Reilly into space behind Ndiaye and Jake O’Brien and allowing the left back to loft a ball onto the head of Haaland. Somehow, City’s focal point was free of defenders and, as a result, thundered a header into the ground and up into the roof of the net. Before Everton could regain focus the game was over as Savinho pulled the ball back to Haaland - who had again drifted away from markers into space just inside the box. He slotted the ball beyond Pickford and what was threatening to become a war to the end with Everton became a match that ended in relative comfort.
It would do a disservice to Everton’s first 60 minutes to claim this outcome was coming. But until they find the ruthlessness to take the chances they created with the game goalless, frustration is inevitable. Speaking to the ECHO this week, former Blues defender Michael Ball said he left every match between the September and October international breaks, before the Crystal Palace win, with a sense of ‘what if’ as this new-look Everton side butted against its ceiling. The challenge, he said, was to move beyond that in this next tranche of games. There will be easier matches to come but the look on Moyes’ face at the end suggested, once again, he was thinking ‘what might have been’.