With 82 minutes on the clock, Everton had somehow found themselves in the driving seat against Manchester City — the title hopefuls, the quintessential team for May who had come into this fixture in ominous form and, at half-time, looked set to leave it with another three points under their belts.
From looking hopelessly inferior in so many respects and the latest fodder to be fed into Pep Guardiola’s meat grinder, the Blues were 3-1 up with just eight minutes and stoppage time to go. Behind the relentless energy and running of Merlin Röhl and an improbable double from Thierno Barry, David Moyes stood on the precipice of his first ever victory over Pep Guardiola.
The Spaniard was caught by cameras with a thousand-yard stare of disbelief. A number of City fans had begun filing out of Hill Dickinson Stadium. All it needed was for Moyes’s players to maintain their focus, their poise, their composure and the defensive defiance that had, to that point, underpinned a performance full of desire and obstinance to not only secure the win for him but also vault Everton right back into the reckoning for a place in the top six.
What followed will haunt the manager’s dreams and stick in the craw of Evertonians who have now seen their side concede devastating injury-time goals in three successive matches, lapses that could well scupper their European dreams.
The midfield and defence parted like the Red Sea for Erling Haaland to gallop through and do what he does best to make it 3-2 straight from the restart. And then, with the clock well past the minimum six minutes signalled by the fourth official for time added on, Jeremy Doku was left unchallenged to sweep home a mirror image of the curling effort with which he had opened the scoring late in the first half.
That Everton were in a position to win this game at all was somewhat mind-blowing. For most of the 45 minutes of this contest, it felt as though it was just a matter of time before the visitors scored and, if they did, that would pretty much be that.
Moyes’s team was so deep at times that some of them could have been back in town as City dominated the ball and set about trying to chisel away at Everton’s barricades. They eventually made the breakthrough a couple of minutes shy of half-time but they had found clear-cut chances hard to come by.
Jordan Pickford beat away a drive from Rayan Cherki in the 18th minute while Antoine Semenyo dragged a shot across goal having collected the loose ball and then volleyed Doku’s cross over a few minutes later.
Everton, featuring changes in midfield as a result of an injury to Idrissa Gueye that saw Tim Iroegbunam come in and Röhl deployed wide on the right, didn’t have their first meaningful foray forward until 25 minutes had elapsed, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s early shot being blocked behind by Abdukodir Khusanov.
And yet they could well have scored first seven minutes after that when Röhl scampered down the right flank leaving his marker in his wake, saw his attempted square ball for Beto diverted behind his target by Gianluigi Donnarumma’s glove and the striker fired an eventual shot off Kusanov and behind rather than lay it back for a more routine chance for Iliman Ndiaye.
Back at the other end, Cherki had skied another Doku cross into the South Stand before the Belgian winger took matters into his own hands at the end of a counterattack by City. Everton’s rearguard had shut down two separate shooting opportunities before the ball fell to Doku on the edge of the box where he engineered just enough space to bend an unstoppable shot into the top corner.
The mountain before the Toffees felt insurmountable heading into the second period as, straight from kick-off, Nico O’Reilly had a shot blocked behind for a corner. And yet, within a minute came the first hint at the mayhem to come when Beto was played in by Dewsbury-Hall and it took a last-ditch tackle from Marc Guehi to charge down the Guinea-Bissau international’s shot.
With an hour gone and Everton growing in belief, Ndiaye burst through the opposition defence and looked odds-on to score but shot straight at Donnarumma rather than wide or over the stranded goalkeeper.
Five minutes later, after Barry had come on as a surprising replacement for Beto, the Senegalese was in again for a carbon-copy chance but again he put it straight down Donnarumma’s throat.
That opportunity had come from Kusanov mis-judging a deep ball forward by Pickford and it was his defensive partner who was at fault as Everton were gifted an equaliser in the 68th minute.
Röhl tried a speculative ball forward into the City penalty area banking on Barry having made a run behind the defence but it was read by Guehi who calmly sent it back towards his keeper. The England man under-cooked the pass, however, allowing Barry to nip in and slot it home, with Guehi’s touch rendering the striker onside.
Bramley-Moore Dock was energised, the volume surging, and Ndiaye responded with another battling run and it took another saving challenge from Guehi to shut him out in the 72nd minute. James Garner swung in the resulting corner, though, and it was met by the head of Jake O’Brien before the net bulged and the home crowd erupted again as the Blues took the lead.
Ndiaye could have made it 3-1 just a couple of minutes after that when for a third time he found himself bearing down on goal but despite Barry being better placed to his right and begging to have it slipped into his path, the winger went for glory once more and was foiled again by the keeper.
But, after Cherki had whipped a direct free-kick into the side-netting at the other end, Barry did double Everton’s advantage as the match entered its closing stages, thanks to another impress run by the revelatory Röhl. The German latched onto O’Brien’s throw-in, drove past substitute Mateo Kovacic towards the box and lined up a shot of his own but miscued it across the box where Barry was on hand to nonchalantly knock it into the empty net.
It was a potentially seismic moment in the title race, with City trailing Arsenal by six points but with this and one further game in hand, and Everton’s prospects of qualifying for Europe… if the Blues could just hold out.
Infuriatingly, unforgivably, they were pegged back immediately. No one Royal Blue, least of all James Tarkowski and Michael Keane, had truly got themselves set for the kick-off from which Phil Foden despatched a slicing pass straight though the heart of Everton’s defence. Haaland sprinted through the yawning gap and out-paced both centre-halves before clipping the ball over Pickford to make it 3-2.
Hill Dickinson Stadium was briefly hushed before the roar went up demanding that the team see out the final minutes. Kovacic smashed a shot well over. Foden belted an effort of his off target. Moyes replaced Dewsbury-Hall and Röhl with Charly Alcaraz and Nathan Patterson and was then forced to throw Harrison Armstrong on as the clock ticked past the allotted stoppage time because of cramp to Iroegbunam.
Either side of that change, Donnarumma came up for two corners for City and when the second was touched on by Guehi to Doku in space 20 yards out, the winger was invited to size up another curling shot, this this time with his right foot as the Blue shirts in front him stood rooted to the spot and he found the far corner again beyond Pickford’s despairing dive.
Coming in the wake of conceding injury-time winners to Liverpool and West Ham, it was another agonising gut punch for Everton at the death; the difference between finishing the match week sitting joint-eighth, two points off sixth and having to settle for 10th place and a four-point gap to Bournemouth in the Europa League slot.
There were, of course, many positives to take. Röhl put in the kind of display that makes Moyes’s decision to leave him on the bench for the past three months utterly bewildering; Iroegbunam exhibited raw tenacity in the middle and Barry could well have begun a remarkable arc of redemption after hitting his nadir as an Everton player after his pathetic showing in the derby.
Overall, however, It was a night of what might have been for Moyes and Everton who could have secured a memorable victory had they just made better decisions and been able to hold their nerve to the end.
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