Goodison Park then, one last dance

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·6 de octubre de 2024

Goodison Park then, one last dance

A 5:30 kick off gives you the opportunity to make your way to the destination in question at a leisurely pace and I had a canny afternoon bouncing round the bars of the Cavern quarter, including establishing that the locals expected very little from the game, before heading off towards the crumbling old ground for the final time.

Everton are extremely lucky that Selhurst Park exists, because for me, it’s the only thing stopping Goodison standing outright as the worst stadium in the league.

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This ground was likely state of the art when Everton were one of the country’s most successful teams in the eighties but it seems like it’s barely had a lick of paint since.

After clicking through the ancient turnstiles of the Bullens road end we managed to exploit a bit of a life hack for this place, heading for “T-Bone’s secret bar”.

Basically, Goodison has the same issue of any well aged away end, as a long narrow concourse is pretty unforgiving for space and can feel incredibly claustrophobic at times. My mate Tansey was leading the charge to power through all of this to the very end, where there is an under-utilised bar due to the amount of people that give up or queue for one of the bigger bars before they get to this point. There’s a nice, easy accessible toilet there as well and this all offered a great opportunity for some pre-match speed drinking.

With Goodison pegged for demolition, I feel like I can share the above trade secret, but if we end up drawing these away in the FA Cup then I’m in bother for spilling the beans on this one as T-Bone’s Secret Bar will doubtless be overrun with minceheids and riff raff who would otherwise just blindly charge to the nearest refreshments counter.

It’s more likely we’ll not see the place again and this antiquated concourse is up there with things we’ll all be well rid of.

Then there’s the seats.

Every time I’ve been here I’ve allowed myself to wonder if they’ve replaced the remaining wooden seats and today gave the answer that they never ever would. It doesn’t really matter that they’re rubbish, no one in a Newcastle away end uses their seat, but the engineering genius that installed them has each seat direct behind the one in front, as opposed to angled, so you’re stood in between the shoulders of the two people in front like every other stadium I’ve ever been in. This means that people, from throwing their hands up or moving suddenly, can block your view or, at worst, risk busting your nose with any display of exuberance.

The game then, was a bit as expected.

We briefed Pickford, they hammered Gordon. The Everton fans I spoke to were terrified at the prospect of Michael Keane starting in place of the freshly injured Branthwaite, but this was pretty much cancelled out by the expected absence of Isak (and Wilson of course).

The story of the day in a nutshell was that United controlled the game better than any away match this season so far. They looked assured in possession and it was extremely encouraging how, whenever Everton looked to attack, we swarmed them and someone would win the ball back and recycle it. That was the positive. The negative was that we were at best wasteful and at worst clueless when it came to creating goal scoring opportunities.

This was almost reminiscent of the Wimbledon game as the opposition sat in and allowed us the possession, obviously hoping to nick one from a set-piece or something, which sounds utterly crackers that a Premier League side playing at home would take the same approach as a league two side playing away, but that’s the plan Dyche went with. Infuriatingly, it almost paid off.

Twenty minutes of United dominance had elapsed before James Garner’s probing cross found Doucoure sneaking between the goalie and defence to head Everton into the lead. The ground exploded and the taunts began in earnest as Newcastle trudged off to take the kick off. However, there was the sweet delay of the purple screen and before you knew it the Gwladys Street end had enough stuff on their collective faces to make the world’s biggest omelette. Chris Kavanagh can jump on VAR every week for us for my liking, as he correctly called the offside here before intervening again as half time approached.

A fairly innocuous corner ended with Murphy shooting high and wide, with Everton setting off for the goal kick to little noise, only for the ref to suddenly pull things up and the screen to turn that magic purple colour again. Once the ref was called over to the screen things were only going one way and rightly so, as replays showed Tarkowski had scragged Tonali by the shirt and executed some kind of judo throw as the cross came over.

This was some head to head, as their villain faced ours in a decisive moment in the game. It was a horrible moment as Gordon’s poor penalty was beaten away by Pickford guessing correct to his left.

This was likely to set the tone for the day but Everton never seized the initiative second half. Instead it was just more of the same. Joelinton had his best game since opening day, repeatedly beating two or three players with strong runs into the box. On more than one occasion he did the hard work and squared to the middle where precisely nobody was waiting for it. Bruno was also in improved form, having seen an early effort cleared off the line by Ndiaye. His second half effort when he found himself with space to shoot at the edge of the box was woeful, ballooning over the bar when well placed to at least test Pickford.

There was a hairy moment as Tonali lost possession to Calvert-Lewin in a dangerous position, only for Pope to dive full length for his usual contribution to getting us out of jail. He parried it as far as Gueye who blasted well over, but there was a kerfuffle as DCL felt impeded by Burn. There’s always a risk of “levelling up” when one side has had a penalty and Everton have done no small amount of whingeing about it since, but the replays clearly show Calvert-Lewis’s trailing leg trips Burn to initiate the contact.

Howe rolled the dice by making what subs he could, with Almiron providing a bright cameo including a tight effort into the side netting that looked agonisingly goal-like from the away end. What should have been the Paraguayan’s most telling contribution though, was a deft touch to split the Everton defence and set Gordon away on goal. Once again he let things get to him in his former surroundings, blasting well over when he could have had an enormously cathartic moment to head off on England duty with.

Hopefully Gordon can bounce back from this and we can take the positives of a comfortable clean sheet and a point more than we got here last year. However, the lack of incisive play is something that could prove costly. If, as mooted, Isak and Wilson return for Brighton and beyond, the focal point in attack might well cause things to click. However, it still seems like the uncertainty over who plays where and does what when all are available is contributing to disjointed performances.

Perhaps the best way I can sum things up is the way I get a sudden rush of optimism whenever Fabian Schar picks up the ball, hoping he might execute one of his magnificent pings over the top, or just plain put his head down, have a run and smash one in PSG style. Basically, I see him as our most promising creative attacking prospect, and he’s a centre half.

This felt massively like two points dropped and the table looks a bit tricky going into the break. The results in the Sunday games could drop us from 6th to 8th, whereas the gap to the European places might thicken right up ahead of a touch run of fixtures after the internationals.

We have only lost once so far this season and this was a performance with some encouraging signs, but my takeaway from this is that we are still capable of dropping many silly points in the league, and the Carabao Cup match with Chelsea needs to be approached with considerable vigour, more so than any of the upcoming fixtures.

It feels like the old “6th or 7th and a couple of quarter finals” just won’t cut it this year, and we’re in real danger of stagnating if we allow it to.

Once again, it’s early days, but NUFC need to find that mojo from somewhere. We all want this season to be memorable for reasons other than the fact that we don’t ever have to go to Goodison Park again.

Everton 0 Newcastle 0 – Saturday 5 October 5.30pm

Everton:

Possession was Newcastle 67% Everton 33%

Total shots were Newcastle 14 Everton 8

Shots on target were Newcastle 3 Everton 2

Corners were Newcastle 10 Everton 0

Touches in the box Newcastle 42 Everton 12

Newcastle United team v Everton:

Pope, Trippier (Livramento 71), Schar, Burn, Hall, Joelinton, Bruno, Tonali (Longstaff 71), Barnes (Almiron 62), Gordon, Jacob Murphy (Willock 69)

UNUSED SUBS:

Krafth, Osula, Kelly, Ruddy, Vlachodimos

You can follow the author on Twitter @Mr_Dolf