Everton’s miserable early season continues with cup defeat to Southampton

Everton 1 - 1 So'ton [5-6 on pens]

Everton lost this evening for the fifth time in six games as they gave up yet another lead and ended up losing on penalties in the Carabao Cup by fellow strugglers, Southampton.

Abdoulaye Doucouré pounced to head the Blues into a 20th-minute lead despite an unconvincing start by Sean Dyche’s side but they were pegged back just 12 minutes later when Taylor Harwood-Bellis capitalised on awful defending to head home the equaliser.

The hosts, who were left to count the cost of two spurned chances from Jesper Lindstrom when he just had the goalkeeper to beat, meandered their way through a tedious second half, much of it without a recognised striker after Beto was perplexingly withdrawn with an hour gone, and were eventually dumped out following yet another a shootout when Alex McCarthy saved from Ashley Young.

With Dominic Calvert-Lewin, James Garner and Vitalii Mykolenko missing through illness, Dyche made eight changes in all to the team that started at Villa and was forced to improvise in defence where Dwight McNeil was initially deployed as a left back while Roman Dixon, overlooked against Doncaster, made his second start on the other side of defence.

Jake O’Brien partnered Michael Keane in the centre while Orel Mangala and Harrison Armstrong made their full debuts in midfield, Lindstrøm got his second start since arriving on loan from Napoli, and Iliman Ndiaye played to the left of Beto.

Southampton, coached by Russell Martin to play a game heavily reliant on possession — gallingly, Everton would have just 26% of the ball on their own pitch against a team that played last season in the second tier! — set their stall out early to dictate the contest but after Adam Lallana put an early header wide, it was the home side who forced the first save of the evening.

Armstrong powered past his man and played in Beto who took a touch before delivering a powerful shot from the angle that McCarthy beat behind for back-to-back corners, the second of which ended with McNeil flicking a header over the crossbar.

It was from another corner eight minutes later that Everton seized the advantage, however, after Lindstrøm’s attempted cross had been diverted behind. McNeil sailed a dead-ball delivery deep past the back post where O’Brien did well to knock it back into the danger zone for Keane to head on and Doucouré to stoop and steer it beyond McCarthy and make it 1-0.

The visitors sounded a warning shortly afterwards when Lallana picked Nathan Wood out with a cross but Joao Virginia, starting ahead of Jordan Pickford this time, denied his header before Charlie Taylor chipped in from the byline and Joe Aribo despatched a wayward header into the Gwladys Street End.

It might have been 2-0 a minute later, though, when Lindstrøm was put clean through, albeit slightly wide of goal, but he could only send a weak shot into the keeper’s arms.

Not long past the half-hour mark, though, it was 1-1. The otherwise laudable Dixon thundered through Ryan Fraser to conceded a free-kick in a dangerous area near his penalty area and when the resulting set-piece was whipped to the back post, Harwood-Bellis rose unchallenged by either Doucouré or McNeil to bury his header past Virginia.

If Everton’s fans had been hoping for a bit more energy, purpose and control from their side in the second period, they were badly let down mistaken and the longer the game went on with the Blues looking decidedly second best, the more it looked as though it would be a case of penalties or defeat.

Beto and Lindstrøm combined to create an even better opening for the Dane than his opportunity one-on-one against McCarthy when the Portuguese knocked into space for him to run but the final shot was smashed off the advancing goalkeeper’s body and away from goal.

At the other end, Virginia did well after Fraser had profited from a fortunate ricochet off Keane by saving low by his near post while, later, Tyler Dibling belted a shot that struck substitute Ben Brereton-Diaz on its way to goal before the Chilean international had a chance himself when he charged through centre of Everton’s defence but was foiled by Virginia.

Moments of entertainment and hope were in desperately short supply from Dyche’s men but after Beto was taken off and replaced by Young, to loud boos from many in the ground, his makeshift forward line did put together their best move of the game with eight minutes to go when Ndiaye flicked it inside to Lindstrøm, he nudged it on to McNeil but the final shot deflected up and over off Wood.

Substitute Tim Iroegbunam headed the resulting corner over, Dibling almost won it before the end when he was allowed to dribble down the Saints’ right, cut inside and shoot, and Young hammered a wayward volley into the Street End setting up another unwanted penalty shootout.

Every kick taker was perfect through the mandated 10 penalties before it moved into sudden death where James Bree netted at 6-5.

The last kick of a ball at Goodison Park in the League Cup (hat-tip Andrew Jai Presley), the competition that Everton appear destined never to win and which has brought consistent misery under a succession of managers, was struck by Young, cannoned off McCarthy, then the post and out. And out went Dyche’s team.

Given the pitiful start under Dyche, no one would argue that the Premier League is of paramount importance to a squad as stretched as Everton’s, but this was a chance to inject some confidence and optimism into the veins ahead of two hugely important fixtures against Leicester and Crystal Palace over the next 11 days and dampen talk about the manager’s future.

That you couldn’t pin this defeat on the fact that there were two teenagers in the line-up — because the mistakes, the lack of guile, purpose and energy came from some of the more experienced players — is as damning of Dyche as the possession statistics which make for embarrassing reading given the standard of the opposition.

Dyche will hope for good news in terms of the availability of some of this evening’s missing senior players before the trip to the King Power Stadium this weekend but much more of this and his position would, under normal circumstances, become untenable. Perhaps the only thing that would save him is the vacuum at the top of the Club and Everton’s desperate financial position.

 

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