Match report
Right, I’ve got to slope off. The match report will be with you any minute now. Till then, bye!
Updated
Dean Smith is sad.
The lads are devastated in the dressing-room because we deserved more out of the game. We took the lead, we’d had chances to take the lead before, half-chances really, and then we missed a massive chance to go 2-0 up. But defensively I thought we’d been good and hadn’t conceded too many opportunities, but in the last eight minutes we got a little bit sloppy on the ball and didn’t take pressure off ourselves. For the previous 82 minutes we showed really good composure.
I think Theo’s heading it back across goal, which makes it more disappointing, and Ezri puts it over the line. We needed to show more composure on the ball in the last eight minutes. We gave them the ball back and invited pressure on. There’s massive pressure on us to get over the line with three points, we know what’s at stake. It’s one of those where we want to get close together and make it really hard for them to break us down.
I thought we deserved the victory and didn’t get it today. We’re disappointed with the result, but we’re still in it and if we keep fighting the way we are we’ve got a chance of getting out of it.
For 85 minutes tonight Everton were abysmal. But they were spurred on by the embarrassment that comes with losing to Aston Villa, and just nine minutes or so of decent play was almost enough to win it. Walcott made a difference after coming off the bench and scored with a deft header, while Bernard significantly improved the team by going leaving the pitch.
Some breaking Everton-related news, courtesy of the Telegraph’s Jason Burt:
I am told Everton have offered £18m for Southampton midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg. More more on @TeleFootball
— Jason Burt (@JBurtTelegraph) July 16, 2020
The Premier League action continues at Selhurst Park, where Crystal Palace play Manchester United. Scott Murray is yer man for that one:
Here’s the bottom five as it stands:
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | West Ham | 35 | -15 | 34 |
| 17 | Watford | 35 | -21 | 34 |
| 18 | AFC Bournemouth | 36 | -25 | 31 |
| 19 | Aston Villa | 36 | -27 | 31 |
| 20 | Norwich | 36 | -42 | 21 |
Aston Villa’s final two fixtures:
Tuesday 21 July: Arsenal (h)
Sunday 26 July: West Ham (a)
While we’re at it, Bournemouth’s:
Sunday 19 July: Southampton (h)
Sunday 26 July: Everton (a)
And Watford’s:
17 July: West Ham (a)
21 July: Manchester City (h)
26 July: Arsenal (a)
And finally West Ham’s:
17 July: Watford (h)
22 July: Manchester United (a)
26 July: Aston Villa (h)
Final score: Everton 1-1 Aston Villa
90+5 mins: It’s all over. Two shots on target, two goals, one point apiece.
Updated
90+4 mins: Reina claims the corner well, but Villa fail to break.
90+3 mins: Walcott tees up Sigurdsson, whose shot deflects wide. Everton are pushing for a winner here. The clock ticks.
90+3 mins: Walcott fizzes a low cross into ye olde corridor of uncertainty, but Calvert-Lewin can’t quite reach it.
90+1 mins: There will be four minutes of stoppage time, or thereabouts. They start with Douglas Luiz playing an absolute cracker of a pass to Grealish on the left, but his pass infield to Davis runs through to Pickford.
90 mins: Everton have had an excellent five minutes or so, finally playing with some urgency and almost instantly revealing that Villa’s defence isn’t up to much.
89 mins: Villa push forward again and win a corner, but the referee spots a foul in a packed area, and Everton get a free-kick.
GOAL! Everton 1-1 Aston Villa (Walcott, 88 mins)
Everton also score with their first shot on target! Walcott’s header from wide of goal on the right loops over Reina and dips in, crossing the line just before Konsa hooks it away. This time, unlike in Villa’s game against Sheffield United a couple of weeks back, the referee’s watch buzzes!
Updated
86 mins: What a chance for Everton! Andre Gomes ghosts past Konsa, who falls over, and pulls back to Calvert-Lewin at the near post, but he turns it wide!
83 mins: There have been 21 shots so far in this game (Villa are 15-6 up). One of them has been on target.
82 mins: Everton cross from the left but it clears the area and runs to Walcott, whose cross clears the area and runs to Digne, whose cross deflects away for a corner. Sigurdsson’s set piece clears the area and runs out of play.
79 mins: Incredible miss! Grealish produces a fabulous cross from the left, which dips over the entire defence and onto the right foot of El Ghazi at the far post. He just needs to sidefoot it in, but he sidefoots - well, sideshins - across goal and wide!
78 mins: Kean smashes a shot goalwards from 30 yards. I use the word goalwards in its most approximate sense.
76 mins: The only other relegation-threatened team that will be at all pleased by any of this is Bournemouth, because they’ve still got to play Everton.
HUGE GOAL
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) July 16, 2020
Ezri Konsa puts Aston Villa ahead at Goodison Park!
📺 Watch on Sky Sports PL
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74 mins: Richarlison, who has also been terrible, goes off along with Davies, and Sigurdsson and Kean come on.
GOAL! Everton 0-1 Aston Villa (Konsa, 72 mins)
It’s an excellent cross from Hourihane, and Konsa throws out a foot and sends it bouncing into the net!
Updated
72 mins: Another set piece for Villa, and a chance for Grealish or Hourihane to whip in a killer cross.
71 mins: It looks like Sigurdsson and Kean are being readied. The camera captures Carlo Ancelotti on the touchlines, looking incredulous.
70 mins: Gordon takes on Elmohamady for pace; the Villa man throws out an arm to hold him off, and gets booked for it.
68 mins: The second drinks break comes. It’s terribly tense, because Villa are playing well but still haven’t scored and Everton are playing poorly but might score anyway, but it’s not exactly good.
67 mins: Hourihane shoots straight into the wall. Still no shot on target.
66 mins: The referee spots another shirt-pull, this time from Branthwaite on Davis, and Villa have an excellent shooting chance from a set piece. No booking this time, though.
64 mins: Villa also do a double substitution. Trezeguet and Samatta are off, El Ghazi and Davis have come on
62 mins: Everton make a double switch. Iwobi and Bernard trot off, and Walcott and Gordon trot on.
62 mins: Richarlison fouls McGinn on halfway, and is booked. Definitely a foul, but a harsh booking if you ask me.
61 mins: Decent build-up from Everton (Bernard again involved), and it ends up with Richarlison, whose control is so bad he decides to pretend it was a pass to Calvert-Lewin, and Villa intercept.
59 mins: Another good Villa cross from the right. It lands on McGinn’s head. Literally on the top of it.
58 mins: Bernard does a not-bad thing, controlling smartly, turning and passing to a man in space. I thought I should mention it, for balance.
56 mins: Digne tugs McGinn’s shirt. The midfielder goes down about half an hour later, but it’s a mandatory booking and Digne is duly booked.
Updated
55 mins: Davies shoots high from 22 yards. That’s shot No14.
55 mins: Mings gives the ball away, and Everton win and quickly waste a good attacking opportunity.
54 mins: Bernard needs to leave the field as quickly as possible. He has barely put a foot right since the first minute.
52 mins: Good work from Iwobi on the right, and he whips in a tasty cross that nobody gets on the end of. Calvert-Lewin made a run to the near post but the ball dropped at the far, and Richarlison hadn’t really made a run at all.
51 mins: Andre Gomes curls in a free-kick from wide on the left, and Calvert-Lewin heads over. I think that’s the 13th officially-recognised shot of the match, none of them on target. “I’m an Everton fan,” confesses Matt Burtz, “and if Villa can’t beat this Everton team playing the way they’ve played over the last week and a half, they don’t deserve to stay up. I don’t care who their remaining two games are against.”
50 mins: Villa are totally owning the start of this half. They have so far converted this domination into three Everton goal kicks, but it’s all very promising.
49 mins: Grealish cuts in from the left again, and this time he does curl towards the far post. He misses again.
Updated
47 mins: Chance! McGinn’s tasty crossfield pass finds Grealish on the left, who cuts onto his right foot, shapes to curl a shot towards the far post and instead goes towards the near. And misses.
46 mins: Some of Everton’s passing in defence has been bizarre. Keane, wide on the right and getting closed down by Samatta, passes to Pickford, and the keeper gives it right back again. What is Keane, by the corner flag and with a Villa forward in close proximity, going to do with that? Win a throw-in, as it turns out, but still...
46 mins: Peeeeeep! There have been no half-timely changes for either team.
The players are back out. Sky are speculating about when precisely Villa go win-or-bust. Do they really need to win this, though? Obviously it would help, but wouldn’t a draw still keep them in the hunt?
“Everton fan here,” admits Mary Waltz. “I don’t get it. Everton should be much better then we show. Am I simply deluded? We have quality players, I think, but the end results don’t seem to match up with our talent.”
I agree that Everton’s end results don’t match up with their talent. In particular their forwards seem to be playing with little confidence, and some of their midfielders - particularly Andre Gomes - seem to have had a complete abilityectomy.
I think Villa have been marginally the better side, repeatedly forcing Everton’s midfield into mistakes or snaffling the ball away from them and looking dangerous as they approach the Everton penalty area, but that’s where the good news ends. Nobody has created a chance of note and we are still awaiting a first shot on target.
Half time: Everton 0-0 Aston Villa
45+3 mins: An excellent tackle dispossesses Iwobi now, but Villa can’t create a decent chance and that’s the end of the first-halfish action.
45+2 mins: Samatta clatters into the advertising hoardings, and gets checked over by the physio. He seems to have recovered.
Updated
45+1 mins: As we go into the first of two minutes of stoppage time, Grealish hits his cross straight to Keane. He gets another go soon after, with his left foot this time, and lifts this one onto Trezeguet’s chest, but it bounces off him to Pickford.
45 mins: Bernard fouls Hourihane on the Villa right, and the visitors have a good crossing opportunity. “Villa fan here,” admits David Bertram. “Grealish is clearly an outstanding player but I think the real steal when we go down is Luiz who has been quality since we’ve been back. As an aside this is torture to watching knowing only a win will do.” It’s pretty painful for fans of Bournemouth and Watford too, I think. West Ham are probably less troubled, but not by much.
43 mins: Digne finds space in the penalty area, but Bernard can’t find him with a simple pass.
42 mins: Shots at both ends. First Digne gets a decent shooting chance but sadly on his right foot, and anyway it’s well blocked. Then Douglas Luiz has a pop, but it flies high.
Updated
41 mins: Digne’s decent deep cross finds Iwobi, who controls and blasts in a low centre that Mings, despite not knowing much about it, deflects to safety.
40 mins: Villa are outshooting Everton, having had four attempts to the home side’s two, but none of them have been any good: we are yet to witness a shot on target.
36 mins: From the corner Villa win another, and then another. Hourihane is obviously bored of taking corners by this point, because the third one he passes straight to Bernard.
35 mins: Andre Gomes is having a dreadful game, and gives the ball away again. Grealish ends up shooting from 22 yards or so, and the ball deflects off Branthwaite and goes wide.
33 mins: A promising attack for Everton ends with Digne passing to Iwobi, on the edge of the area, and his left-footer goes high.
29 mins: Richarlison is played into space on the right, with only Douglas Luiz back to track him. Instead of taking on his compatriot, though, and bursting past him into the box and towards goal and glory, he waits for some support and then when it comes doesn’t find it.
26 mins: Excellent pressing from Villa prises the ball off Andre Gomes 10 yards or so outside his own area. Gomes gets up and wins it back, but is then counter-pressed into giving it away again.
26 mins: A lovely cross from Douglas Luiz on the right, which dips, curls, but doesn’t dip quite enough for Trezeguet.
23 mins: Villa have a guy going around the players offering them bits of cloth. I can only assume they’re heated, like the facetowels you get on aeroplanes and in Chinese restaurants sometimes, as everyone he hands one to immediately feels compelled to wipe their face with it.
22 mins: Hourihane curls a 20-yarder high and wide, and the referee decides he’d like a drink.
21 mins: It’s all very high-tempo, low-precision stuff. Villa are being particularly good at closing Everton down, and the home side are really struggling to develop any rhythm.
18 mins: I wouldn’t want to be an Everton defender right now. Mings climbs for a header with Branthwaite, heads the 18-year-old in the nut and then lands arse on head just for good measure.
17 mins: Since Bernard’s gorgeous first-minute touch he has barely done anything good, except for almost scoring with a miskick. He collects Digne’s pass on halfway, and promptly gives the ball away.
16 mins: Holgate receives a bit of physiotherapeutical assistance. He eventually gets up, but doesn’t look comfortable and Everton are forced into an early substitution. Jarrad Branthwaite comes on.
Updated
14 mins: Chance for Villa! El Hammardy crosses from the right, and Samatta heads high.
13 mins: Everton hit the bar! They didn’t mean to, to be fair, but Bernard’s chipped cross from the left clears a scrambling Reina and drops onto the woodwork.
12 mins: Jamie Carragher is convinced that Elmohamady is called El Hammardy, like some kind of Spanish MC Hammer tribute act.
9 mins: Kind-of-semi-chancy-thing! Richarlison crosses from the left, Mings tries a clever clearing back-header at the far post, and the ball goes straight into the chest of Calvert-Lewin and deflects in the other direction. It could have gone anywhere, certainly might have nestled in the net, but Villa get the break and it loops high.
8 mins: Digne takes a short corner, which looks from the get-go like a counter-attack waiting to happen. Villa duly win it, but Davies does well to stop them.
7 mins: “At some point, someone is going to have to explain what it is that Alex Iwobi does,” writes Stephen Carr. “He’s been around for years and I still cannot fathom out what role he performs.” He’s a question without an answer, which must be a conceptual nightmare for defenders. As I write, though, he sets up Bernard on the edge of the area but the Brazilian takes a heavy touch and loses the ball.
Updated
4 mins: Villa need to be careful not to get sucked into the trap of long balls and hopeful early crosses. Everton have been more patient so far, but as I type that Coleman lifts a long ball towards Richarlison, who can’t do anything with it.
1 min: A lovely touch from Bernard to outfox Elmohamady on the left flank and right on the halfway line, and the ball is worked across to Iwobi, who lifts a cross into the area where Calvert-Lewin bicycle kicks wildly over. That Bernard touch though!
1 min: Peeeeeeep! Aston Villa get the game started.
And out they come. Football incoming!
The Everton players are in the tunnel, and the pre-match air-raid siren is sounding!
Here’s Andy Hunter’s preview to this match, in which Carlo Ancelotti tells Jordan Pickford to up his game big time:
He’s not doing well. I spoke to him about this yesterday. I’m not so worried because he has quality, he has character, but I have to say to him, and I did say to him, that he has to improve. I and everyone else at the club has total confidence in his quality. It is true he can do better and he knows this because he is critical of himself. I hope there is improvement in the next games.
Dean Smith says Everton are a “wounded animal” who “were hurting after the Wolves game”, but thinks his side has what it takes to win this evening:
It’s a very big evening. No bigger than it was on Sunday, but obviously the pressure is building. A few games left, and ones that we have to win. So tonight we’re coming here to try and win the game.
[The win over Palace has] certainly given the lads a big lift. Their performances have merited at least two or three wins since we come back and we had to wait until Sunday to get the win against Crystal Palace. It gives them that belief to keep persisting with the performance levels, and if you do that you win games.
I think [Villa’s relegation rivals] are going to be nervous, the fact they’re playing each other tomorrow night, two of them. We’re all fighting. David, Eddie, myself and Nigel, we’re all trying to do our best for our football clubs.
"They're all going to be nervous..."
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) July 16, 2020
Dean Smith hopes Aston Villa can put pressure on their relegation rivals with a win at Everton tonight
📺 Watch Everton v Aston Villa live on Sky Sports PL or follow here: https://t.co/ICIhk9wpsp pic.twitter.com/Lx89lFUGaV
Five changes for Everton, who drop Baines, Sigurdsson, Walcott and Gordon from the team beaten 3-0 by Wolves, and lose Mina to injury. Coleman, Andre Gomes, Bernard, Iwobi and Holgate come in.
Villa bring in Matt Targett for Neil Taylor, who twanged a hamstring in the weekend win over Crystal Palace, but are otherwise unchanged. Kortney Hause, who got ribknacked in the warm-up to that game, is out again.
The teams!
The team sheets are fresh off the photocopier, and these are the big names writ upon them:
Everton: Pickford, Coleman, Keane, Holgate, Digne, Iwobi, Davies, Andre Gomes, Bernard, Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison. Subs: Baines, Sigurdsson, Walcott, Sidibe, Stekelenburg, Kean, Virginia, Branthwaite, Gordon.
Aston Villa: Reina, Elmohamady, Konsa, Mings, Targett, McGinn, Douglas Luiz, Hourihane, Trezeguet, Samatta, Grealish. Subs: Lansbury, Nakamba, El Ghazi, Jota, Guilbert, Nyland, Vassilev, Davis, Hayden.
Referee: Anthony Taylor.
🚨 TEAM NEWS! 🚨
— Everton (@Everton) July 16, 2020
Carlo makes 5️⃣ changes for tonight's game against @AVFCOfficial.
UTT! #EVEAVL pic.twitter.com/yMydRUMkMp
Presented by @eToro, this is how Aston Villa line up to face Everton this evening! 👊#EVEAVL #AVFC pic.twitter.com/GFX1IZQzyu
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) July 16, 2020
Hello world!
Well then. In theory, tonight should be straightforward. Over the season as a whole Everton have scored precisely 1.5 as many points as Aston Villa, rising to 2.22 times this calendar year. Everton’s home record is quite good (they have won 30 points at Goodison Park, precisely double their away tally), while Aston Villa’s record on their travels is horrid (they have won nine points away from Villa Park, precisely half of their home tally). Everton last lost at home in November (to Norwich, randomly). Villa’s last and indeed only away win this season came at Burnley on New Year’s Day.
Everton, in short, have a significantly better team than Villa, one that tends to get significantly better results.
But by popular consensus they’re not playing very well at present, and may be suffering from a few motivational issues. Villa, meanwhile, probably need to win two of their last three to have any chance of staying up and are thus fighting for their lives. Victory would give them hope; defeat would leave them on the brink. This game promises desperation, if only from one side. And in my experience desperate footballers often do fun things. So strap yourselves in, it could be quite a ride.
