When 27 minutes ticked around, you could almost feel the collective intake of breath around Goodison.
Was this the moment that would herald an Everton revolution, the moment when supporters finally got the message through to owner Farhad Moshiri that this great, historic club is not a mere play thing?
Well, not quite. It was half-arsed at best, several hundred hardy souls turning their backs on the action, to brave the raw elements raging outside. More chanted their support of the team.
And kept on chanting, even as a shocking Arsenal side somehow contrived to still lead at half time, and spurn late sitters to put the game beyond doubt.
Perhaps if one had gone in - and Eddie Nketiah will have nightmares for years to come about a miss from two yards - the protests would have turned ugly. But they would have fallen on deaf ears anyway.
Moshiri wasn’t even there. Again. Even though he is in the country.
The Monaco-based businessman has been to precisely one Goodison game this season. While fans showed how much they care with some truly joyous, passionate scenes at the end as Demarai Gray spectacularly won the game, he showed contempt for them.
How else to explain his absence? How else to explain his total lack of understanding on what it means to be an Evertonian?
Many would say his painful lack of awareness of what his club means explains his appointment of Rafa Benitez, even in the face of outraged hostility from his own board.
Marcel Brands clearly decided to walk this week because of Moshiri, because he was weary of being a fall guy for his owner’s increasingly eccentric decisions, and total lack of inclusion.
Brands was never allowed to do his job. Moshiri has appointed all the managers alone, signed most of the players himself - 58 of them. Most have been disastrous. An owner without a clue.
The fans showed, with those almost tearful celebrations at the end, they deserve more. More from Moshiri than this shocking show of arrogance in his treatment of them.
