Everton FC correspondent Joe Thomas reflects on the big win at Old Trafford and a club that can enter the festive season with genuine optimism
David Moyes celebrates after Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall scores for Everton against Manchester United at Old Trafford. Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images
David Moyes celebrates after Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall scores for Everton against Manchester United at Old Trafford. Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images
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Three years ago this week, I was in Australia covering Everton. It feels like a lifetime ago.
This was a trip of interviewing Ashley Cole under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, sitting down with Frank Lampard in the team hotel and balancing watching Everton overcome Celtic and Western Sydney Wanderers with the World Cup that had caused the Premier League season to halt.
I was reminded of those heady days when a reader sent me a photo of a picture he had taken with me, him and his son during the trip - a lovely reminder of the reception the club (and I) received as we started the festive season Down Under.
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But it was a period that was also on mind as we came to the end of the most recent international break. There are shades of early winter 2022 in this season, I feel. After Liverpool fell to defeat at home to Nottingham Forest I looked at the table and realised a win at Old Trafford would put the Blues above their fiercest rivals.
It was the first time I could remember that being the case since Bonfire Night three years ago, when Everton hosted Leicester City under the lights at Goodison Park.
The press room was an interesting place that evening. The Blues had laboured in parts during the opening months of the campaign, but were also showing signs of promise. There was the goalless draw with Liverpool that the Blues came so close to snatching, and the games leading into the visit of the Foxes had seen Everton smash Crystal Palace and earn a draw at a useful Fulham side that should have been reduced to 10 men in the first half after Aleksander Mitrovic caught Idrissa Gueye.
I often look back on the week that followed as a sliding doors moment. The season was starting to feel like it held potential and a win over Brendan Rodgers’ side that night would have pushed the Blues above Liverpool. Given the World Cup break, it was a position that would have held for weeks - including beyond Christmas Day.
Instead, that evening was the beginning of the end of Lampard’s reign. Leicester dominated Everton and started a week of misery in which a defeat at home led to those dreadful back-to-back away losses at Bournemouth in the Carabao Cup and the league.
When I traded Boscombe Beach for Bondi Beach a week or so later, the world naturally felt a brighter place and, in the right circumstances, I do think that Lampard could have reversed the slide that had started on November 5. Given the chaos that would unfold off the pitch, I’m not sure any manager could have stopped that season from descending into crises, however.
Three years later, it feels as though Everton are finally beyond the bitter struggles that engulfed the club that winter. The new stadium has not only been built, it is hosting the Blues and emerging as the jewel on the banks of the Mersey we all hoped it would. The announcements this week that it would host rugby league’s Magic Weekend and be a venue for the Women’s World Cup, alongside the recent confirmation it would host games in the men’s Euros, highlight just how quickly it has become a flagship venue the whole of Merseyside can be proud of.
Everton now have the stability behind the scenes that they lacked through the Farhad Moshiri years and, on the pitch, the Blues have achieved what they could not against Leicester and taken the opportunity, for this week at least, to look down the table and see Liverpool.
That came courtesy of that stunning, statement win at Manchester United on Monday night. The winner at Old Trafford came from one of the unsung heroes in Leicester’s win over Everton in 2022, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, and the pair of us reflected on that match recently - James Maddison stole the headlines but just as important were Youri Tielemans and Dewsbury-Hall - whose toe was broken by Gueye in the opening minutes of the game.
We then looked forward and agreed that this Everton team, the one he has so quickly become influential to, could well end one of the long droughts at the homes of the ‘big six’ and claim a famous victory on the road this season. Our optimism was vindicated in spectacular fashion.
For all the signs of progress, winter 2022 still represents a cautionary tale, and that is what I have been building to. I don’t for one second think the wheels will come off as they did that season. But Everton have an incredibly challenging week ahead.
Newcastle United and Forest at home will not be easy while Bournemouth has been a place of utter hell in my time covering the Blues.
This is a team with potential but also limitations and, while Everton might have worked to quickly move on from the spat between Gueye and Michael Keane on Monday, the absence of one of their most important players will be keenly felt across the next six days.
There is a chance I get an early morning walk on Boscombe beach before making the long journey home on Wednesday. My hope is it will be the first time I embark on that drive with a positive result. Even if I don’t, I still think - for the first time since I started covering the Blues back in April 2022 - we are heading towards a new year in which our attention can focus on looking up the table, not down it.