Talking Point: When Everton really needed another away win, Sean Dyche’s side again proved they’re now made of sterner stuff
Everton players applaud their fans after their 1-0 win over Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on December 2, 2023
The Premier League table still shows Everton as being in the relegation zone but once again at Nottingham Forest, Sean Dyche’s men proved in reality they’re now far better than being one of the division’s bottom three sides.
Regardless of the outcome of the appeal against their 10-point deduction that Blues chiefs submitted to the Premier League on Friday’s deadline, this Everton team should still have more than enough to ensure the club extend their record-breaking tenure in the top flight to 122 seasons in 2024/25, their final campaign at Goodison Park.
The independent panel’s decision to impose the biggest sporting sanction in the top flight’s 135-year history – one that is more severe than the punishment for going into administration – seems to appear arbitrary and draconian to most right-minded people willing to see above partisanship. But unfortunately Evertonians have learned the hard way, both now and on many previous occasions, not to expect any favours from the game’s authorities.
The manager and his players are just going to have continue keeping their heads above water through their own efforts but they are already showing they’re more than capable of that. Everton were mostly woeful for the best part of the previous two seasons, posting their joint-lowest equivalent points total when avoiding the drop in the penultimate game of 2021/22 and then breaking the record outright with an even more paltry tally to stay up on the final day in 2022/23 but this term under Dyche they have become a different beast.
This richly-deserved 1-0 victory at the City Ground ensures the Blues have now won four Premier League away games already in 2023/24 – as many as they achieved in both of the previous two seasons combined – and the figure of successes on their travels already totals half a dozen in all competitions with Carabao Cup triumphs at Doncaster Rovers and Aston Villa. Ahead of this fixture, the hilarious Bryan’s Gunn twitter account which describes itself as “a one-man mission to break football down into its constituent parts” and regularly features compilation clips of players and managers trotting out many of the game’s most staid clichés, showed a selection of bosses each claiming that different stadia were all “a tough place to go,” with all 20 Premier League venues ultimately included.
Joking apart though, Steve Cooper’s side had lost just three of their previous 20 home matches in the Premier League. Perhaps it was childish brashness or even naivety in terms of understanding the false position Everton are in given a playing record that doesn’t tally with their placing but when the home mascots were asked for their pre-match predictions, the response was a series of emphatic scorelines in Forest’s favour.
As someone who covers all of the Blues’ games home and away, this isn’t the first time this correspondent has witnessed such youthful hubris from opposition fans though. Even before the ban, little tykes who followed Brentford, West Ham United and Crystal Palace were often proclaiming how their sides were going to steamroller their visitors from Merseyside.
It was never going to happen and after completing a hat-trick of wins in London – only the second time in over a century of trying that Everton have recorded three consecutive league successes in the capital in front of fans – Dyche has now added Nottingham Forest to his list of scalps on his happy travels. Indeed, his improving side would have moved above big-spending Chelsea in the table with this result had it not been for the points deduction with Transfer Checker pointing out that the Stamford Bridge outfit have splashed out £1.1billion on transfers since Todd Boehly took over last year while Everton’s net spend over the past five seasons is minus £27million.
Despite Everton having won on only four of their previous 32 visits to the City Ground since 1962, the club’s official statistician Gavin Buckland was far more sage in his pre-match forecast than Forest’s junior fans when he stated on the ECHO’s Royal Blue podcast that the game was set up for an archetypal Dyche away win and so it proved. By his own admission, the Blues boss loves a 1-0 and six of his 10 Premier League wins to date with the club have been by that scoreline.
While it was a closely-fought contest, Everton looked the more polished and controlled side for long periods and would have gone ahead earlier had Beto’s finishing been sharper or Dwight McNeil’s goal-bound effort not been cleared off the line by Murillo. Once they did get their noses in front, they defended resolutely as a unit and largely kept their hosts at arm’s length until Jordan Pickford was twice called into action late on as limbs tired.
This wasn’t a smash and grab or desperation stuff though and given the circumstances in which they entered the game, the Blues deserve great credit for that. Having sunk to the bottom of the table through Burnley’s 5-0 thrashing of Sheffield United which finished little over half an hour before their own match, Everton really needed to start showing that the club’s punishment was not having an adverse effect on their players but that’s just what they did as they stood up to be counted.
Too many times in recent years, Blues teams have crumbled whenever they faced adversity but now they’re proving they’re made of sterner stuff and as Dyche said in his pre-match press conference before the Forest fixture: “We’ve got to win games and now obviously that’s just been enhanced currently because of the 10 points that have disappeared.” The travelling Evertonians were just as blunt in their own way then they told the Premier League after the final whistle just where they could stick their deduction…
