VIEW FROM THE BLUE

Everton dig deep to conquer Chelsea

A week can be a long time in football. On Sunday evening, genuine fear for the immediate future of Everton Football Club was starting to grip the hearts of Evertonians in the wake of that truly awful defeat at Bolton Wanderers. The paucity of the striking resources, the lack of a consistent threat from left midfield, the propensity for lapses at the back... these have become all too familiar traits of David Moyes's team in recent weeks, but the apparent death of the players' spirit was a new and alarming development.

Fast forward six days and the sight of Captain Phil Neville standing proud, arms outstretched, milking the celebrations in front of 6,000 indefatigable believers at Stamford Bridge before being mobbed by his ecstatic teammates and the passion, the spirit and the sense of unity was there again for all to see. Magical moments such as these ? a stunning extra time equaliser from the sweetest left foot seen in Everton colors since the days of Kevin Sheedy and the unparalleled drama of a penalty shootout ? are what the cup is all about and the Blues' long-suffering fans are hoping that this could be the Moyes era's Kevin Brock backpass.

Of course, this manager has very different terrain to navigate than the one that faced Howard Kendall almost three decades ago and while his best striker remains on the sidelines with another niggling muscle strain, he will need every drop of determination and will to win from his players. For the bulk of this FA Cup Fourth Round replay, Everton looked desperately short of attacking threat, Jermaine Beckford proving once more that he is il-suited to the lone striker role and his eventual replacement, Victor Anichebe, betraying a general lack of quality needed at this level of the game.

For much of the second half, the tie looked Chelsea's to win if they could find a way past the stubborn resistance of Everton's back line and a goalkeeper enjoying one of those career-defining days. The visitors, despite the backing of a huge and vocal traveling contingent, had waned as an attacking threat, especially after a bruised Tim Cahill was withdrawn after 70 minutes, completing first Beckford and then Anichebe's isolation up front.

And yet with a bit of luck ? or better judgement from the referee's assistant? ? the Blues might have stolen this replay in the 90th minute when Marouane Fellaini rammed home the loose ball after Peter Cech had spilled a right-foot shot by Everton's standout outfield performer, Leighton Baines, but he was adjudged to have been offside. Television replays would show the upper half of his body was beyond the last man, his lower half level but with the offside rule being so enigmatic these days, it was hard to know whether or not it was the right decision. Had it been allowed to stand, it would have proved to be an unlikely winner given that, on balance, Chelsea had done enough to merit a place in the next round.

Everton had started brightly enough and played a more settled passing game than their hosts in the opening exchanges but it was Carlo Ancelotti's side who came within the width of the post to opening the scoring when Phil Jagielka glanced a deep free kick off the foot of his own post in the 20th minute.

Signs that Howard was on top form arrived a few minutes later when the American saved well with his legs from Florent Malouda, Didier Drogba rapping the rebound wide of goal, and then standing up impressively to deny Malouda after Drogba had slipped the Frenchman in with a well-weighted pass.

The game's first moment of controversy, however, arrived on the stroke of half time as Ramires raced into the right side of the Everton area, Howard charged out at him and committed himself with slide towards his feet and the Brazilian tumbled to the ground. Chelsea players and fans alike bayed for a penalty but after a pause for thought and a look at his assistant, Phil Dowd brandished a yellow card for Ramires instead for simulation. From one angle it looked to be a stonewall penalty but closer analysis shows that if Howard made any conttact it was minimal and that, deliberately or otherwise, Ramires catches his toe in the turf.

Everton's only threat in the first half had been from a number of promising balls into the box, mainly from Baines on the left but occasionally by Coleman, the quality of whose delivery is still some way short of matching his endeavour down the right flank, but with few vanilla shirts forward, the crosses rarely found an Everton player.

Beckford spent most of his time chasing shadows but did link nicely with the hard-working but ultimately ineffective Leon Osman three minutes into the second half, the midfielder steering a right-footed half-volley wide of Peter Cech's goal from just outside the area. Then, after Frank Lampard had headed disappointingly wide from his team's point of view at the other end, Osman saw a tame header caught by the 'keeper and Beckford skied a first-time effort off Mikel Arteta's low cross, though the ball from the Spaniard was probably too far behind him to enable him to get off the kind of shot he's have liked.

With the game an hour old and referee Dowd seemingly finished with his programme of "evening up" for the penalty decision by waving the yellow card at any vanilla jersey that moved ? Coleman, Baines and Distin were all booked in the first 15 minutes of the second period but only the French defender's rash sliding tackle deserved it ? Chelsea began to turn the screw and Everton's FA Cup lives started to really look in peril.

In the 64th minute they were opened up by Salomon Kalou on the right side of the area and he slipped the ball inside to Ramires who crossed low to Lampard to side-foot goalwards from about eight yards out. Howard, though, turned the shot around the post with his standing foot for a corner. When Malouda's resulting kick fell to Branislav Ivanovic at the back post, the Serbian defender looked to prod it home but Howard was there again to block it on the line.

But for all their territorial domination, the Londoners created few other genuine chances in normal time, Lampard chipping the best of them over the bar after Malouda had played him in, while a Coleman header from Bilyaletdinov's superb chipped cross to the back post that Cech saved low and, of course, Fellaini's disallowed goal reminded Chelsea that the Blues weren't going to lie down and die.

The back of Everton's defiant stand looked to have been broken in extra time, though. when Nicolas Anelka wriggled between Baines and Distin on the Chelsea right, his cross eluded Jagielka and Heitinga and Lampard fired into the far corner to make it 1-0.

But Baines had other ideas. When Ivanovic was penalised for a foul a few yards outside the area with a little over a minute left on the clock, the England international defender set his sights and then curled an absolute beauty of a free kick into the top corner, well beyond the reach of Cech who could just watch as the ball floated inside his left-hand post. The massed ranks of Everton fans behind the goal erupted as one and Everton were back in the tie, having forced a penalty shootout.

That the sudden-death drama would play out at the same end of the ground made what would follow all the sweeter. Lampard despatched his penalty past Howard with aplomb but when Baines made it all too easy for Cech to push the Blues' first kick away it looked as though the left back had gone from hero to villain.

There were more twists to come, though. Anelka tried to be clever with one-step run-up but Howard guessed the right way and beat his kick away with his right palm allowing Arteta to level the scores with an emphatic shot into the corner. Heitinga and Essien successfully converted their penalties but, after some cheeky gamesmanship by the Dutchman where he pumped up the traveling fans before bumping Ashley Cole with his shoulder as he walked past, Cole swept his kick high and wide of the angle of post and bar handing the place in the fifth round on Everton's plate.

And so the responsibility of the all-important fifth spot kick was left to the unlikely figure of Neville who set himself up two paces from the ball and then rattled it into the roof of the net with the technique and composure of a world-class striker before advancing to celebrate in front of the faithful.

A first Everton win, albeit by "technical knockout", at Stamford Bridge since 1994 secured against the odds is the latest in a line of potential catalysts to the kickstart a revival in the team's fortunes this season and it is obviously the fervent hope of all Blues fans that this result does galvanise the players for the Premier League run-in and, of course, the rest of the road to Wembley, one that could yet take them through Eastlands if they overcome Reading on 1st March and Manchester City beat Aston Villa.

They will continue to be handicapped in Saha's absence, though, as the striker position remains a very worrying problem with him out the side. Beckford clearly needs the support of another striker playing alongside him ? Cahill was playing a deeper role on this occasion ? and Anichebe just doesn't appear to have the quality, the movement or the ability to hold the ball up as a lone striker either.

This result brought back many memories of the semi-final triumph over Manchester United two years ago, one in which a toothless Everton side repelled the advances of supposedly superior opposition before winning a dramatic penalty shoot-out to dump a so-called "Big Four" team out of the competition. When the chips are down like that and you don't necessarily have the tools to go to-to-toe with a better equipped team, spirit can be the determining factor and that will count for plenty between now and the end of the season.

In the meantime, Moyes's players have delivered we fans another moment of magic to savour and who can't resist watching clips of that thrilling climax over and over again to pass the time between now and next weekend's kick-off against Sunderland?

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