They say you cannot please everyone, but referee Michael Oliver succeeded in pleasing neither Roberto Martínez nor Garry Monk in this feisty encounter which belied the mid-table comfort Everton and Swansea currently enjoy.
The visitors had been on course for a fourth-straight win, thanks to Aaron Lennon’s second goal for the club four minutes before the interval, when Séamus Coleman conceded a penalty for handball after stumbling under pressure from the Swansea substitute Marvin Emnes.
The Republic of Ireland international clearly handled as he fell to the turf, having anticipated that Oliver would award him a free-kick following contact with Emnes, and looked up in horror as Oliver pointed to the spot and Jonjo Shelvey dispatched the penalty to earn Swansea a point they merited.
Monk felt Oliver, who had infuriated the Swans manager earlier this season when awarding Victor Moses a penalty at Stoke, could have given the spot-kick for either the handball or Coleman forcing Emnes over as he surged around him. Martínez, unsurprisingly, did not agree.
He said: “Séamus felt there was contact. The defender gets in front, the striker is trying to get there. If you don’t press the brakes quick enough you are going to get some contact. The referee at that point needs to make a decision. Séamus loses his balance and as he falls he ends up touching the ball with his hand.
“There was no goalscoring threat whatsoever. I think it was very harsh. The referee should have applied a bit of common sense. From my point of view, I would have wanted to see a free-kick awarded to us. Two or three actions straight after it were exactly the same and given as a free-kick. That is disappointing, you want some consistency. It is a huge punishment after a good performance.”
But Martínez could not argue Swansea did not deserve their share of the spoils as, motivated by their desire to secure a win which would see them surpass their previous highest Premier League points tally of 47, the hosts had the better of the opening half-hour.
The in-form striker Bafétimbi Gomis was lively, turning Phil Jagielka and forcing Tim Howard into an acrobatic save. Unfortunately for the Frenchman he tweaked a hamstring in the process and will undergo a scan to determine the severity of the problem.
Shelvey had the ball in the back of the net with a magnificent long-range volley, but the goal was chalked off, to Monk’s chagrin, by Oliver for a foul by Wayne Routledge on Leighton Baines.
Everton took advantage of the let-off and, after Coleman had Lukasz Fabianski at full stretch with a low angled drive, they took the lead. James McCarthy and Arouna Koné exchanged passes down the left and when Ashley Williams missed the former’s cross, Lennon controlled and calmly finished.
The lead could have been greater had Steven Pienaar, on his first appearance in four months, put more power into a strike from a Koné lay-off or Fabianski not kept out Gareth Barry’s firm header.
But Swansea reasserted their authority, with Ki Sung-yueng firing over having beaten Barry with a lovely piece of skill, before the penalty arrived and Shelvey earned them a point to move level on their 47-point target.
It left Monk rueing Shelvey’s disallowed strike, while also questioning why Oliver did not send off Koné, rather than book the forward, for an aerial challenge on Federico Fernández in the first half.
He said: “I thought with the [Koné] challenge on Federico in the air, you see players get sent off for less than that. I thought he was lucky. But I was more disappointed with the disallowed goal. I thought it was very harsh, it was a soft free-kick, on what could have been one of the goals of the season.”
