I arrived in quite an optimistic mood for an away game.  I honestly went thinking that we'd get another 0-0 draw and that that would keep me going over Christmas.  I guess it's another sad reflection of the present state of our club when you get excited by the thought of a third 0-0 draw in a row.  I would never dared have hoped for what we actually ended up with.

No surprises at all in the starting line-up.  It was effectivley the team that finished the game against Wimbledon.  A couple of youngsters on the bench tested even my squad recognition during the warm up, as did the return to the bench of the long absent Tony Thomas.

FIrst Half

The first half was a scrappy affair, I suppose we're all getting used to that.  The three centre-backs handled pretty much everything chucked at them so we were able to go through the half without any real scares.

Frustration again focussed upon the lack of imagination in midfield and the astonishing number of misplaced passes.  Both Barmby and Cadamarteri were working hard in the first half, but it again wasn't happening for them.  Having said that, dull as it may have been, it was a vast improvement on the first half at Wimbledon.

With neither team getting anywhere, you could see the frustration of the players with the game becoming more and more physical.  Both Barmby and Cadamarteri were being knocked left, right and centre by their markers; all happily ignored by the referee.  With this and the general intimidatory chants from the Leicester 'boys pen' (well that's what the singing section looked like to me) the afternoon was played out under an unpleasant atmosphere.

Our midfield joined in the fisticuffs, and it was a wonder that there weren't twice as many cards over the afternoon.  Gary Speed is supposed to be captain.  He should be the one dragging team-mates away from 'handbags-drawn' situations with the knowing 'Calm down' not the other way round (as happened on three occasions this afternoon).

As an indication of how hard the game was, when the half-time whistle was blown Danny Cadamarteri lay clenching his head for the second time in as many minutes.  He was down for so long that he can't have got inside to get his half-an-orange or whatever they have now for at least five full minutes after everyone else had left the pitch.

Second Half

A positive result of the pathetic attempts to wind us up from the home fans was that it kept the Everton supporters in good voice.  The atmosphere was reflected in a slight lift in the play from both teams in the second half and so it still always looked like the points would be shared.  

Our best chance fell to Cadamarteri after a hell of a long ball from Barmby, but the keeper had narrowed the angle before the shot could be made.  Leicester had a long shot from the yobbish Walsh saved, and could have snatched it when a header from Clarridge went just wide.

As the game rolled on towards it's seemingly inevitable draw, the foggy mist that had obscured the view all game got thicker on the pitch.  This is the excuse I'm using for not being able to make out who was brought down on a promising break.  It was probably Cadamarteri, as he'd suffered being hacked about all game. Thankfully, the referee, whose eyesight had been questionable up to that point suddenly had a Lazarus like recovery of his afflicted vision. He pointed to the spot. Bloody hell, I nearly burst a blood gasket!

First of all, you jump up and down like crazy as if the award of a penalty meant a goal is a certainty, then you suffer that agonising realisation that it isn't quite that straightforward...  I clasped my hands on my head, and looked at the floor, that didn't help — my heart was banging like an artillery bombardment.

I then foolishly looked at the clock, and reading "87 minutes" just reinforced how crucial the next five seconds were going to be.   I then clocked that Gary 'Missed at Leeds' Speed was stepping up, and that nearly finished me.  I simply could not watch.  I moved away from my seat onto the steps and fixed my gaze on the floor.

All I know then is that I'm five steps further down than I was an instant before, stuck in an orgy of joy.  What a stunning release of emotion!!!

The last few minutes dragged on a bit but we made the very most of them. "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way, oh what fun it is to see Everton win away, heh!" came thepredictable and sweet chant.  It's been a full calendar year, several hundred pounds in travel costs and a lot of stress since we were last able to sing those words.  We made the very most of it.

It's only now I've calmed down from the excitement, I can take a more objective view and see that we mustn't get too carried away.  Our midfield again looked poor, Leicester were not the most challenging of opposition, and our forwards again didn't look like a partnership, and we only really once looked like scoring.

On the bright side that is the third clean sheet in a row, and all the great relegation escapologists have always started the job at the back.  The big test then, comes at Old Trafford on Boxing Day.  Until then, enjoy today's result.

Individual Performances

• Myhre 7 - Anything coming his way was dealt with easily.  A talisman.
• Barrett 6 - Adequate.  Suffered an annoying booking for time wasting on a throw-in which simply wasn't his fault, none of the team would move for him and so he had to stand there like a lemon with the ball till the ref lost his patience.  That should never happen in a professional game.
• Watson, Tiler, Short all get 7.  I thought the three look an excellent unit.  If I had to pick one out it'd be Tiler, he looks to be far from a poor signing.  His passing looks on a par with Barrett's though.
• Hinchecliffe 6- Still not hit real form.
• Oster 6 - Flashed of the magic, but I know he can do better.  I'm getting really peeved off with sections of the crowd who've got it in for him. We have to accept that he's a flair player and that taking risks to be adventurous means your doing just that – taking a 'risk'.  They're not always going to come off.  Accept it.   Remember Limpar?  Oh aye, he did lay himself open to some well earned barracking though when he took the single most shocking free kick I've ever seen.
• Farrelly 6 - Better than last week, and even had a good run, and a good long distance effort, but I still don't think he's good enough for us.
• Speed 6 - The best and the worst of him on display.  Plenty of passion, the flip side of that is loss of temper and concentrtation and misplaced passes.  Came up trumps in the end.
• Barmby 6 - Not a striker, by now that is obvious.  His most useful contributions where when he dropped back and played Danny on.
• Cadamarteri 7 - A geat sight when he is in full flow on the wings.  Still shows the hunger and enthusiasm lacking in the rest of the team.  Remains by far our most dangerous looking player.
• Ball came on for the last minutes after the goal.

Back in the East Midlands 12 months on, at the end of a game destined to be remembered for petty, personal grudges, Gary Speed's penalty kick – a validictory moment? – won it and the whole scenario had a rosier hue.

Kendall has been in football long enough not to be taken in by one result. The last time Everton scored, a full five games ago, was also by virtue of a Speed penalty, so this might be the beginning of another traumatising run.

A small mercy to be celebrated, though, for a manager and club in peril came to Everton because Danny Cadamarteri is the kind of young, cocksure striker around whom there is a buzz whenever the ball comes near.  With the end of the game fast approaching, he might have turned his back but Neil Lennon's header was limply delivered and Cadamarteri was on to the scent.  Leicester's goalkeeper Kasey Keller, all but numb with inactivity, ran into him on the edge of the penalty area, sent him crashing and Speed took the onus to collect the ball and drive it straight and true from the spot.

Speed will be taking penalties for Newcastle in the not too distant future, if football's grapevine is getting the story straight.  He was clearly intent upon leaving his indelible mark upon the game and on Leicester in some shape, often in the form of a kick where it hurt the most.  Maybe there was an extra incentive.  Who wants to leave a club with the supporters remembering your final performance and you didn't try a leg?  

Speed was Everton's power through the middle, the three central defenders behind him were steadfast and Cadamarteri, the 18-year-old who set the team alight when they last won a game – the Merseyside derby two months ago – was full of vim and vigour.

There was plenty of movement, nobody could criticise the effort, but the harum-scarum frenzy of the game devoured its chance of providing the quality one associates with the Premier League.  Get it down, get it away, take the man as well as the ball if need be.  These were the basics of two teams trying to arrest the mid-winter skids.

Leicester had won only once in their previous six games, Everton one in 10.  These are statistics that glower. So, the bookings began to mount and so did the levels of theatricality.  Did Cadamarteri throw himself to the floor a couple of times just before the interval when Leicester captain Steve Walsh approached?  Oh yes he did, chimed the Leicester fans; oh no he didn't, was Everton's riposte.  The referee, unable to distinguish right from wrong in the swirling mists, became embroiled in mischief which threatened to run away from him.

Jeff Winter took eight names in all and had to be protected as he left the field at both half-time and the end.  It was on this ground and in this fixture last season that he penalised Leicester's goalkeeper Kevin Poole for picking up a back-pass, allowing Everton to take a free-kick 20 yards from the point where the ball went dead. They scored from it.  Leicester manager Martin O'Neill does not forget such critical turning points in a manager's career.  

"I'll get the sack soon enough," he said. "Perhaps I'll send Jeff a note when the P45 arrives.  There was a lot to play for today, we needed the points every bit as much as Howard needed them.  There was going to be a lot of niggle, it's the way the game is and you need strong officials to deal with it.  A referee can have a poor spell but he can tell himself that he has to get better and stronger. I thought Jeff had a poor game today, but we also got beaten, I'm absolutely pig sick about that."

O'Neill suggested that his England under-21 striker Emile Heskey was the hardest done by the referee, suggesting that he had been butted in the incident which led to a free-kick given against him and a yellow card for what appeared to be an act of feigning injury.  But it was that kind of game all along.

Kendall, rather, preferred to concentrate on the effect of a rare Everton success.

"The supporters have had to wait a long time and we're delighted this win has arrived, that elusive away win. I'm not responsible for all of those games but I am this season. It affects us as a club and you wonder where the next one will come from.  e have Manchester United away on Boxing Day, we'll not be favourites there."

Yes, after the turkey, almost certainly the stuffing.

That day it was the 18-year-old, Danny Cadamarteri, who scored such a spectacular goal.  At Leicester it was Cadamarteri who provoked the 89th-minute penalty from which unexpected victory was gained.  Six minutes earlier, Cadamarteri had obliged Kasey Keller, Leicester's American goalkeeper, to make his first save of the game after Barmby had cleverly sent him away down the left flank.

It was again from the left that Cadamerteri cut into the box, after a suicidal back-header by Lennon.  Keller, who came tearing out of his goal, brought him down just inside the area.  It was a clear penalty.  Martin O'Neill, the Leicester manager, did not disagree, though he said: "I think Spencer Prior should have got there.  Once a forward gets a touch on the ball, anything can happen."  Gary Speed put away the penalty kick.

Howard Kendall, the Everton manager, was left, for once, with a smile on his face, while Leicester had egg on theirs.

"Cadamarteri," Kendall said, "would cause most people problems with his pace.  He's strong, he's burst on the scene, he's got tremendous talent and is a little bit different from most strikers that you see because of that electric pace."

Pace, it should be said, supported by moral and physical courage.  He cannot, as Leicester's big defenders discovered, be bullied out of the game, nor will he give up taking difficult options, trying to beat an opponent and finding the fastest way to goal.

Leicester have their own young England star in Emile Heskey but, on this occasion, after a bright beginning, he was something of a blunt instrument, not helped by Leicester's lack of intelligence in the build-up and their penchant for banging the ball upfield, hoping he could catch it.

In the first couple of minutes Heskey looked as if he might win the game on his own.  His header from Guppy's left-wing cross had Thomas Myhre, Everton's new Norwegian goalkeeper, diving to save.  Almost at once, Heskey had a shot parried by Myhre, only for Fenton to shoot wide from the rebound.

But with that fine old Everton warhorse, Watson – inexplicably given a free transfer at the end of this season – so resilient in defence, that was almost the sum of Leicester's penetration until, just before half-time, Guppy's long ball from the right found Izzet unmarked, but he wastefully struck his shot wide.

In the second half, Guppy turned inside Barrett out on the left wing before finding Claridge, the substitute, who headed narrowly wide.  The truth is, however, that Leicester generated far more heat than light in an unpleasant game that saw Jeff Winter, the referee, brandish yellow cards in abundance.  Even so, he was largely a permissive figure and he should have booked Oster almost as soon as the game began, before letting far too many unseemly goings-on pass unpunished.

His performance was thrown into relief in the first minute of the second half when, having ignored so much skulduggery, he booked Barrett simply for delaying a throw-in.  Kendall was tolerant in victory.  "It was a difficult game to handle," he said, "because it looked as if things were happening off the ball."  Alas, they were happening on the ball, as well.

The Everton captain's 88th-minute penalty kick, after Danny Cadamarteri had been fouled by goalkeeper Kasey Keller, decided an ill-tempered match in which there had been eight bookings and some indifferent refereeing from Jeff Winter.

The official needed to be escorted off the pitch but the derision of the crowd ought to have been saved for the players, who had failed abjectly to provide anything of a spectacle on an afternoon when descending fog was almost welcome in obscuring the play.

Everton's need for victory was not so much advisable as acute, the team having won just one of their last 10 matches – admittedly against Liverpool.

They approached the match with the considerable handicap of having Mitch Ward and Danny Williamson injured and Slaven Bilic and Duncan Ferguson suspended but, on the plus side, they had kept a clean sheet in their last two games – thanks mainly to new Norwegian goalkeeper Thomas Myhre.

It is in attack where Everton have really struggled – Nick Barmby, who has yet to score this term, has been a particular disappointment – and Everton's failure to hit the target in the last four games persuaded manager Howard Kendall to travel to Spain last week in pursuit of Valencia's Croatian forward Goran Vlaovic, who is valued at £2 million.  Kendall has also taken an interest in Ian Wright, Uwe Rosler and Steffen Iversen.

Leicester, however, have not been overwhelming their opponents, despite the Midlands side being placed a respectable eighth in the table.  After an energetic start to the championship, they have won just one of their last six games.

Myhre was able to demonstrate his worth in the second minute, reacting instinctively to a fine downward header by Emile Heskey from Steve Guppy's cross, though within seconds the goalkeeper dropped a shot from the Leicester striker but Graham Fenton, darting in, put the loose ball wide.

Steve Walsh, having had a header from a Guppy corner saved, was then needed at the opposite end as Dave Watson's long ball enabled Cadamarteri to turn Spencer Prior, but his cross was smothered by Keller.

Everton could not be faulted for their exertion, digging in in midfield where John Oster was all bustle and bite, but with the two visiting strikers being small in stature, everything had to be played in low.  Speed, the subject of some transfer speculation involving Newcastle in the week, was cautioned and Matt Elliott seemed destined to follow, but Barmby's pleading on his team-mate's behalf seemed to mollify the referee.

Speed was in trouble again for a heavy challenge on Rob Savage. Walsh moved forward to remonstrate but, again, Mr Winter exercised leniency and Speed stayed on the pitch, but the official had no option but to caution Everton's Carl Tiler for a reckless challenge on Heskey.

It was a game in urgent need of some control and composure, perhaps mirroring the desperation of Everton's plight. The frustrations kept the game simmering and Cadamarteri was twice left sprawling on the ground after collisions with Walsh and Elliott, and Everton continued their protests after the half-time whistle, with Barmby shoving a steward escorting the referee off the pitch and Kendall joining the hullabaloo.

The interval failed to cool tempers; within 60 seconds of the restart Earl Barrett was booked for time-wasting and Speed was again lucky not to be sent off for a high challenge on Savage.  Savage exacted revenge on Gareth Farrelly and was duly cautioned with Heskey following him into the book for diving – a punishment which incensed the home crowd.

At last, Walsh concentrated on the positive and he brought another accomplished save from Myhre, while Steve Claridge, a second-half substitute for Fenton, glanced a header just the wrong side of the post.

Club                          P    W    D    L   GF   GA   GD   Pts
Manchester United            19   13    4    2   45   13   32   43
Blackburn Rovers             19   11    6    2   36   19   17   39
Chelsea                      19   12    2    5   45   19   26   38
Leeds United                 19   10    4    5   28   19    9   34
Liverpool                    18    9    4    5   31   17   14   31
Arsenal                      18    8    6    4   32   21   11   30
Derby County                 19    8    5    6   33   27    6   29
Leicester City               19    7    6    6   23   18    5   27
Newcastle United             18    7    5    6   20   22   -2   26
West Ham United              19    8    1   10   25   31   -6   25
Wimbledon                    18    6    5    7   19   21   -2   23
Aston Villa                  19    6    4    9   20   25   -5   22
Crystal Palace               19    5    6    8   17   25   -8   21
Sheffield Wednesday          19    6    3   10   31   43  -12   21
Southampton                  19    6    2   11   23   29   -6   20
Coventry City                19    4    8    7   17   25   -8   20
Bolton Wanderers             19    4    8    7   16   29  -13   20
Tottenham Hotspur            19    5    4   10   17   32  -15   19
Everton                      19    4    5   10   17   27  -10   17
Barnsley                     19    4    2   13   17   50  -33   14