And that is very much yer lot. It’s been a blast. Here’s Louise Taylor’s match report, by way of farewell gift. Bye!
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Duncan Watmore provides some Sunderland perspective. And it’s not very chirpy.
Really frustrating for us. Not good enough, and the fans deserve better. There’s not many positives to take from this game. It wasn’t good enough in the second half. Before they scored, they had a lot of the ball but we felt we were controlling the ball well. The goals were frustrating, the manager’s annoyed. We need to get the fans behind us and make sure they keep cheering us, because it wasn’t good enough today. I’m trying to be positive, but we’ve got to go again.
And then, Ronald Koeman has a chat. He was not at all happy with the sloppy, snoozeful first half, but pretty chuffed at the end:
Only the second half. I was really disappointed about our first 45 minutes. From the start it was not the Everton I like to see. We lost a lot of easy balls. Too many players not on the level in our ball possession. We had difficulties. The second half, that was what I like to see. Good football, good pressing, and we had opportunities to score more goals.
I told the players I was really angry about our team. I think we had good defending, that was not the problem. The problem is when we had ball possession in midfield, in front, we lost the ball too many times. You need a good reaction and that reaction came in the second half. I know the players, I know the level they can achieve, and that is the level we saw in the second half, not the first half.
I did not have doubts about Lukaku. I think the two goals Romelu scored with Belgium gave him a real boost, and it’s unbelievable how good he can be. I told him the best answer is always on the pitch, and he showed the goals tonight. A great performance.
[On Gueye’s performance] Fantastic. Maybe he was the key tonight. He’s that player with a lot of energy, and on the ball he’s quiet and he takes good possession. He’s a key player that you need in midfield and I think it’s a great signing for us.
I think we will be one of the teams who fight for European football. That’s a realistic target, and we showed that in the second half. The players are not stupid, they know what we can perform and that was what we showed in the second half.
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Sky grab a couple of passing Evertonians. First, Romelu Lukaku:
I think we could have done better, especially in the first half, which was not as good as we wanted. We didn’t keep the ball, we didn’t create enough, except one clear chance which I missed. But the second half we played a lot better. My fitness levels weren’t as good as I wanted them to be. I could have had five tonight. I have to be more of a serial killer if I want to help the team achieve its objective. We have to keep going as a team.
And then, Leighton Baines:
I’m delighted for Rom and for us. We know he’s got goals in him, his goalscoring record is phenomenal. We all know the goals are going to come. He’s shown tonight what he’s all about. I think we started from scratch. You’ve got to be crystal clear on the fundamentals, what our principals are, what we want to achieve. That’s what we started from. I think the team spirit is fantastic at the moment. Of course, when you’re winning games that’s easy to generate. We haven’t set any definitive objectives.
Sunderland played dreadfully. Their next eight matches include fixtures against Crystal Palace, West Brom, Stoke, Bournemouth and Hull. They need to improve massively. On the plus side, Didier Ndong made his debut, and may transform the team with his incalculable brilliance. Fingers crossed, eh?
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Final score: Sunderland 0-3 Everton
90+4 mins: It’s all over! Romelu Lukaku’s 11-minute hat-trick wins it for the visitors, who rocket up the table to third.
90+3 mins: Then Deulofeu is sent clear, but he miscontrols and a defender boots clear.
90+3 mins: Baines passes to Koné, who checks back, waits long enough for Mirallas to offer him support to his left, ignores him again and shoots from long range into Pickford’s gloves.
90+1 mins: Sunderland had possession of the ball in the penalty area twice in the space of a few seconds there. First Khazri and Defoe got in each others’ way, then Januzaj’s shot was blocked by Williams.
90+1 mins: We’re into stoppage time, of which there will be at least three minutes. Van Aanholt has once again completely recovered.
89 mins: Van Aanholt, meanwhile, is receiving treatment on the pitch for a not-immediately-obvious injury.
88 mins: Lukaku is trudging off, hat-trick bagged, and Koné is replacing him.
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87 mins: Everton will go third at the end of the game. Except if they score another, in which case second place would be theirs.
85 mins: Lukaku gets the ball, 20 yards out, but Pickford saves his left-foot curler. “Does anyone have Dick Advocaat’s phone number?” wonders Eddy Bandel.
84 mins: And they nearly score a fourth as I finally press go, only for Deulofeu’s effort to be slightly deflected and go wide.
83 mins: I’ve nearly posted this email three times, and on each occasion had to abandon it because Everton scored. It feels a little 20-minutes-ago, but still. “Back in secondary school I had to do a classical civilisation presentation in which I continually referred to Ajax, the Greek God,” recalls Max. “Back in the mid 90s, Ajax were the team and I pronounced the name as I-axe. My scholarly and somwhat old-school Classics teacher very bitterly chastised me for pronouncing it incorrectly. He clearly wasn’t a fan of the football stylings of Litmanen, Overmars, Finidi, et al.”
80 mins: “Moyes will probably take credit for this victory,” suggests Ian Copestake. Well, he’s certainly contributed, in his way.
78 mins: I struggle to think of a Premier League side that wouldn’t beat this Sunderland side, playing as they have tonight. They might draw 0-0 against West Brom.
77 mins: Sunderland’s performance tonight has veered wildly between the boring and the execrable.
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76 mins: Kirchhoff is Kirchh-off, Denayer coming on.
76 mins: Bolasie’s race is run. Tom Davies comes on instead.
75 mins: Lukaku has a great chance for a fourth, but blasts over! Bolasie picks up the ball in the middle this time, passes to Lukaku, who ignores an easy pass that would have set Mirallas free to his left, runs into the area and then thunders high.
74 mins: Bolasie cuts inside this time, which means he will inevitably blast the ball goalwards. Pickford pushes this one away.
73 mins: Didier Ndong comes on, replacing Watmore. He is extravagantly coiffed.
GOAL! Sunderland 0-3 Everton (Lukaku, 71 mins)
That’s the hat-trick! The home defence displaying the full repertoir of rubbish, this time leaving a massive gap right in the middle and allowing Lukaku to run right into it. He sprints clear, draws Pickford and sidefoots the ball past him.
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70 mins: Bolasie tries to repeat the trick, sprints to the byline and this time just overhits his cross. He goes down and stays down after delivering the ball, panting heavily and apparently suffering from a severe case of knackered.
GOAL! Sunderland 0-2 Everton (Lukaku, 68 mins)
Bolasie bursts past Manquillo on the left and lifts a fine cross with his left foot towards the back post, where Lukaku continues to benefit from a total absence of marking, and heads in a second.
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67 mins: It’s a decent shooting chance, but Khazri’s effort while on target is extremely weak, and Stekelenburg catches.
66 mins: Defoe has the ball about 20 yards from goal, with Jagielka behind him holding his wrist. Defoe brings this to the attention of the referee through the medium of exaggerated backwards diving, and wins a free kick.
65 mins: Tonight’s key stat:
Romelu Lukaku's first PL goal since the death of Paul Daniels.
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) September 12, 2016
64 mins: Again the ball is passed to Lukaku, with his back to goal. This time he isn’t tackled by a team-mate, and can thus spin and shoot. The ball rockets into the meat of the bar!
63 mins: Everton are hunting a second. Gueye passes to Lukaku in the box and then storms towards him in search of the return. Lukaku has no intention of returning it, instead giving himself space to turn and shoot, only to discover that Gueye is now intent on tackling him, for some reason. Eventually, Gueye shoots over.
59 mins: “Is there any doubt that Sunderland is playing to avoid relegation when, at home, they are conceding 70% of possession to Everton? The hope is to get a point at home against Everton?” ponders Scott Wedel. It’s a fair question. Sunderland have been poor thus far tonight. On this evidence, average is a wild long-term ambition.
GOAL! Sunderland 0-1 Everton (Lukaku, 60 mins)
A goal! We’ve got a goal! Everton break, Khazri loses a key challenge in midfield to Deulofeu, who attempts an overambitious pass that hits a defender and rebounds to Gueye, whose cross finds Lukaku once again unmarked, and this time he finds the bottom corner with his header!
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57 mins: Sunderland make their first change, bringing on Khazri and taking off Gooch, who started the game well but whose influence has waned.
@Simon_Burnton Tell Peter Oh there's track on U2's 1st album - Boy - called An Cat Dubh which translated from Gaelic means The Black Cats.
— Stuart Reid (@realStuartReid) September 12, 2016
56 mins: Gueye gets a booking for blocking the ball as Rodwell takes a quick free-kick in midfield.
55 mins: Deulofeu beats the offside trap, runs left, cuts inside and then Rodwell excellently blocks his shot. It rebounds to Coleman, whose own shot rumbles wide, and though a couple of Everton players fling themselves at it in the hope of diverting it in at the far post, none succeed.
52 mins: And now Sunderland’s best chance of all! Koné outjumps Jagielka and diverts the corner goalwards, but Stekelenburg saves! The ball did fly right over his head, to be fair, but he didn’t have a lot of time to react.
51 mins: Half a chance for Sunderland! Rodwell passes to Defoe, but his moment of opportunity was brief, and soon Williams is on top of him, blocking off his options – and also, in the end, his shot. Corner.
49 mins: Sky inform us that Barkley isn’t injured – he just wasn’t playing very well. “When I left the U.K. many years ago, people were pronouncing ‘Real Madrid’ as if it was ‘Not the Imaginary Madrid’, has that one changed yet?” asks Dylan Drummond. “Strangely though, in the 1990s all the commentators made a point of learning the proper German intonation of ‘Stefan Kuntz’.”
48 mins: Oooh! Bolasie, who seems to have started this half on the left, cuts in and slams a right-footed shot goalwards. Pickford pushes it out, and only just behind the lurking Deulofeu.
46 mins: Peeeeeep! Jermain Defoe kicks off.
The players are back out, and Jermain Defoe is standing over the ball ready for kick-off.
Gerard Deulofeu, having spent the interval warming up on his own, is coming on in place off Ross Barkley.
“What’s that, Peter Oh? A riff, you say?” writes Matt Dony. “Achtung Barry? Hold Me, Thrill Me, Khazri, Kill Me? Bullet Deulofeu Sky? Vertig-Defoe?” OK, let’s draw a line under this now – this is all, um, unforgettably dire.
Oh Peter …
@Simon_Burnton Tell Peter Oh that his joke would have been better in the Boro game who had Adam Clayton playing. Plus capitalise Edge.
— Mike Allcock (@PghMackem) September 12, 2016
Watching old matches on YouTube, though, what really surprises me is when Ajax are called ay-jax rather than the generally accepted these days I-axe.
“What’s wrong with pronouncing ‘Jagielka’ like the way most of the Jagielka-clan probably pronounce it, instead of saying ‘Dzhagielka’?” wonders Dylan Drummond. “I still remember Ian St John pronouncing ‘Juventus’ as ‘Dzhuventus’, and me thinking every time he did it ‘What’s wrong with pronouncing it the way the locals would?’”
An interesting point. I would say that a commentator has two acceptable choices: either say a name the way most people in your country say it, or how the person himself says it. What you can’t do, though, is invent a totally new pronunciation for the sheer hell of it. Jagielka, you see, calls himself “yer-gelka”. There is no possible justification for “yag-ee-elka”. None.
Everton lead 65%-35% on possession, 215-100 on passes completed, 2-1 on corners and 6-4 on shots. They should also have led on actual goals, but in the game’s one actual properly good moment Lukaku headed Bolasie excellent cross too close to Pickford. That aside, it’s all been a little bit bobbins.
Half time: Sunderland 0-0 Everton
45+2 mins: The half ends in fitting fashion, with Everton attacking badly. The referee gives them a few seconds to finish their foray, Barkley finds a pocket of space in the area, and then he thumps his cross over everyone and out of play, and the whistle is blown.
45+1 mins: We roll gently into stoppage time, of which there will be one minute.
45 mins: Bolasie drifts left, picks up the ball, shifts it onto his right foot and then belts it into the crowd.
42 mins: Watmore goes on a surging run towards the penalty area, which ends with a tumble on the edge of the area. He gets booked for simulation – there was a shoulder barge from Baines, then he took a couple of steps towards the area, then he went down, and it’s the delay wot done it, I think.
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41 mins: The corner ends in an Everton free-kick, though I didn’t see a foul – it looked to me like Jagielka ran into Djilobodji and bounced off him.
40 mins: Gooch crosses from the left with his right foot, and though the ball is too strong for Watmore, its intended target, it would have floated right into the top corner had Stekelenburg not tipped it over!
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38 mins: Everton have had 68% of the possession so far, and have completed nearly three times as many passes as Sunderland.
36 mins: Bolasie gets the ball on the right, and far from having two men ready to snap into a challenge Sunderland now have nobody anywhere near him. Bolasie looks up, looks down, looks up again, weighs up his options, and then mishits a cross straight to a defender.
33 mins: Van Aanholt comes on and seems untroubled by whatever was laying him low just moments ago, instantly stealing the ball cleanly from Bolasie.
31 mins: Mirallas has a shot blocked by Djilobodji, with the crowd baying because Van Aanholt is lying prone on Sunderland’s left, having slid in to challenge Bolasie and not got up again. Eventually the ball is cleared, and the physio comes on.
28 mins: The crowd seems to have gone very quiet. On Sky, the players’ shouts to each other seem quieter than whatever noise is tumbling down from the stands. This game could do with a goal.
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26 mins: Kirchhoff wins the ball, loses it again, wins it again, loses it again, and then tries too hard to win it a third time, fouling Bolasie and getting a ticking off, but no card, from the referee.
24 mins: Bolasie is showing some promising signs, sending in a couple of decent crosses including the one that should have brought a goal for Lukaku. Sunderland seem to have wised up to this, sending two men when he gets the ball on halfway to turn him into a sandwich filling.
23 mins: Peter Oh emails: “If the Black Cats are looking for that extra edge in their bid to restore some pride today, they need look no further than their team sheet for inspiration: Watmore and the name of Love!”
20 mins: The ball is played into Lukaku, just inside the Sunderland penalty area, who goes to ground in a heap also involving Djilobodji, does a slow-motion spin and toe-pokes the ball goalwards. It’s not Pickford’s hardest save, but it’s a shot on target.
19 mins: Now Rodwell has a 20-yard blaster blocked, and co-commentator Davie Provan has started saying “Yagielka” as well, which is a bit like Steve McClaren pretending to have a Dutch accent when he’s in Holland.
16 mins: Watmore tries to pick out Defoe with an early ball from wide in defence. It’s the second time that’s happened – Gooch was the first to try it – and both long passes have been easily picked off by Everton defenders.
15 mins: Nothing comes of that one, either.
14 mins: Williams heads over from the corner, but the referee spots a deflection and gives them another go.
13 mins: Super save! Bolasie crosses from the right, Lukaku is all alone in the middle, and Pickford flings out a left hand to palm the ball over! Lukaku should really have buried that, mind.
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11 mins: Defoe looks up, having missed that chance, at the linesman and demands that he raise his flag. It did look like Defoe was offside, but it’s a bit odd for him to be complaining about it not being given.
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10 mins: Good work from Gooch, who carries the ball out of defence, exchanges passes with Defoe and keeps the move going. It ends, several passes later, with a Januzaj shot hitting Gueye and looping into the air and down into the path of Defoe, clear of the defence, who shins his volley over the bar.
6 mins: Supporters spend the sixth minute applauding, in support of Bradley Lowery, their young mascot who is suffering from cancer and trying to raise £700,000 to fund his treatment. More here.
#JustOnePound #WereGettingThere pic.twitter.com/2HFMFBQAvJ
— Bradley Lowery (@Bradleysfight) September 3, 2016
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5 mins: Gueye plays a one-two in midfield, runs clear of the snoozing Rodwell and then shoots low and wide from 20-odd yards.
4 mins: An open start, with Sunderland now working the ball to Defoe on the edge of the area, who spins and shoots straight into Jagielka.
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1 min: And Everton attack! Djilobodji might have cleared but doesn’t, Van Aanholt tried to clear but fluffed it, and it all ends in a cross from the right which nearly falls for Lukaku, but Pickford races out to claim it.
1 min: Peeeep! We’re off!
I’m not very good at differentiating one commentator from the next. They’re just player identification aids, really. But the moment when you realise you’ve got the one who calls Jagielka “yagielka” for a game actually involving Jagielka is always a depressing one.
The players are in the tunnel. Proper actual action but a few moments, a load of handshakes, a new-style modern anthem and perhaps a lightning ad break away.
David Moyes has now had his pre-match chat with the broadcasters, and this is what I managed to catch (he speaks a lot faster than Koeman):
I wasn’t tempted to start Ndong. He only came in on Friday evening I think. Thursday. Whatever day we are now. It was too quick. I wanted him to see what the Premier League’s like, see the speed of the game.
The encouraging thing is we’ve been in all the games. Man City we were very close, Middlesborough we were very close and we got a point at Southampton. We’ve always been in with a chance of winning or drawing and we need to do the same tonight. It’ll be a tough game. They’re good players and a good team, but we need to go there and make it as hard as possible.
Lynden Gooch, the 20-year-old American midfielder who makes his fourth start for Sunderland tonight, had a trial at Everton before signing for the Black Cats at the age of 12. I’ve no idea whether they made him an offer, but he may be super extra bonus-motivated to show them what they missed out on.
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Ronald Koeman has had a little chat with Sky:
The start [of the season] is OK. I think defensively the team is more compact and OK. We know it’s a good start but we’d like to continue and I think it’s an important game tonight to get an important result.
On Lukaku: Maybe he did not score this season. Maybe the two goals he scored for Belgium gave him the boost he needs. We need to create chances for Romelu, and then he’ll score the goals. We try to get the best out of every player.
On Coleman: We know with Seamus offensively is one of his strengths. We like to play football and I like to have offensively two left and right full-backs and with Seamus and Leighton Baines we have two of those kinds of players.
And on Sunderland: They are in a difficult situation because they need to win. That means we have to be attentive of the way they start tonight. What we need to do is to play at our level, and then we have a good chance to win.
The winner in May’s 3-2 win over Chelsea was the last goal Jermain Defoe scored at home – he’s scored in 10 goals in his last 10 away games, only failing to score in two of them.
Sunderland's Jermain Defoe has been prolific away in 2016, but has scored only 1 home PL goal since Jan 2 pic.twitter.com/w3jEBuxMRK
— Sky Sports Statto (@SkySportsStatto) September 12, 2016
The teams!
The team sheets have been handed in, and these were the names writ upon them:
Sunderland: Pickford, Manquillo, Kone, Djilobodji, Van Aanholt, Rodwell, Kirchhoff, Januzaj, Gooch, Watmore, Defoe. Subs: Denayer, Khazri, Mika, O’Shea, Ndong, McNair, Love.
Everton: Stekelenburg, Coleman, Ashley Williams, Jagielka, Baines, Gana, Barry, Mirallas, Barkley, Bolasie, Lukaku. Subs: Robles, Deulofeu, Kone, Lennon, Funes Mori, Davies, Holgate.
Referee: Mike Jones.
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Sunderland haven’t won any of their last 22 top-flight games played in August or September, apparently. If last season had started on 1 October they’d have finished 12th.
Hello world!
So as we went into this Premier League weekend the talk was almost entirely about managers – with an eye, back then, on the Manchester derby – and as we go into its final fixture the names have changed but the theme remains the same. Today the managerial spotlight falls upon David Moyes, erstwhile long-term occupant of the Everton hotseat and now patrolling Sunderland’s technical area. He’s had little luck so far, with the Black Cats’ first three games bringing just a single point, won at Southampton a couple of weeks back. Everton meanwhile are unbeaten, having economically converted four league goals into seven league points.
There could be more scoring tonight. After all, this tends to be an entertaining fixture, having produced seven goalless draws – the last in 1983 – in precisely 180 previous meetings, while there are 10 occasions on which the home team has scored either six or seven goals, and a further five on which one of the two sides scored five. And both teams have happy recent memories of their meetings: Everton won 6-2 at home last November, while Sunderland secured their top-flight status with a 3-0 victory here in May. In short I’m expecting an enjoyable evening.
Enough about me, though. Hello, welcome. Let’s have some fun.
Simon will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Louise Taylor on just how close David Moyes came to winning the title with, er, Everton.
