After a couple of successive 1-0 victories, Sean Dyche suffered a first home defeat as Everton manager with Aston Villa triumphing 2-0 at Goodison Park.
The Blues looked the more likelier to open the scoring until a challenge from Idrissa Gueye on John McGinn in the box led to a Villa penalty that the in-form Ollie Watkins converted.
Substitute Emiliano Buendia then completed the scoring to leave Everton back in the bottom three.
ANALYSIS: Sean Dyche may have to play wildcard as board put 'golden thread' in danger
VERDICT: Everton haunted by board failures and six unused players just proved it against Aston Villa
Here are some of the moments you might have missed from the game...
Touchline theatre
Along with the rest of Everton’s board, chairman Bill Kenwright continues to stay away from home matches – having not attended at game at Goodison Park since Dyche took charge – but there was still plenty of theatre inside ‘The Grand Old Lady’, particularly on the touchline as two of the Premier League’s most-animated managers went head to head. Blues fans have appreciated Dyche’s high-energy displays from in front of the dugout with their new boss seemingly always on his feet and often barking out instructions and encouragement to his players on the pitch, but here he came up against someone even more demonstrative at times.
As well as regularly waving his arms in the air, performing elaborate gestures like a tic-tac man at a racecourse, Unai Emery was in danger of marking out his territory by creating a length of scorched turf akin to the baseline at Wimbledon Centre Court after a fortnight of intensive play in the summer heat. One of Europe’s highest-regarded coaches, the Spaniard is determined to get it right in England after the disappointment of his previous spell on these shores at Arsenal.
Two years before he arrived at the Emirates, Emery, who had just quit Sevilla after steering the Andalusian outfit to a third straight Europa League crown, is understood to have been approached for the Everton job as Farhad Moshiri searched for his first appointment in the summer of 2016, but he ended up going to Paris Saint-Germain while the Blues plumped for Ronald Koeman. The same age as Frank Lampard's successor Dyche (51), he came to Villa during this season after they dismissed a legendary former Premier League midfielder of their own in the shape of Steven Gerrard, but while he has revived the Midlanders’ fortunes, you wonder whether for all his talents, whether he’d be as good a fit for the Blues’ needs right now as the man who spent nearly a decade in charge at Turf Moor.
While Emery has a track record of beating Liverpool in big games, his style of play doesn’t seem particularly suited to Everton’s battle against relegation and the short passes out from Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez to his centre-backs have shredded the Goodison faithful’s nerves when carried out by their own players under previous regimes. Going back to the turf as it were, Dyche and Emery seem to be two horses for courses but the Blues just need their man to get them over the line come May.
Not Taylor-made for Goodison Park
Not many referees are greeted by warm receptions at Goodison – or any Premier League ground for that matter – and after receiving a particularly hearty boo when his name was read out on the public address system before kick-off, things didn’t get much better for man in the middle, Anthony Taylor. The main flashpoint, which of course changed the course of the entire game, was his decision to award Aston Villa a penalty when Gueye challenged McGinn in the area, immediately and emphatically pointing to the spot, unlike many of his other delayed decisions on the afternoon.
Dyche said in his post-match press conference that he hadn’t seen the incident back but presumed VAR had taken a look and he was an advocate of using such technology, but replays seemed to show that the Everton midfielder had in fact got the ball. On face value there would seem to be a significant amount of doubt in the decision but with Taylor’s fellow Greater Manchester official Chris Kavanagh – another referee to have courted controversy with the Blues – on VAR duties, the decision didn’t even get referred back for a touchline video review.
Taylor might be one of this country’s highest-rated referees as the only Englishman on the list for the last European Championships and one of two at the World Cup earlier this season along with Michael Oliver, but then Everton have often felt they’ve been given the thin end of the wedge from supposed leading whistle-blowers over the years. The penalty call was just one of several decisions Taylor made to infuriate large sections of the home crowd: Eagerly booking Amadou Onana in the first minute, in contrast he seemed to afford Villa’s man mountain Tyrone Mings a great deal of protection throughout the game, allowed Martinez to blatantly steal several yards with a free kick and failed to show at yellow card to McGinn when he hauled down Onana just outside his own area after the Blues midfielder had been in full flight.
Hero turned Villain
Refereee Taylor wasn’t the only victim of Goodison’s boo boys as former Everton left-back Lucas Digne found himself jeered by some home fans when making way just after the hour mark. While this proved to be the French international’s second winning return to his former club in little over a year, the whole affair still seems rather odd it’s still far from clear-cut as to whether either party has really benefitted.
First arriving at the Blues from Barcelona in the summer of 2018, Digne faced the daunting proposition of replacing Leighton Baines, the club’s best player in his position of modern times, but for three seasons at least he proved himself worthy of the task. A forward-thinking full-back with a strong focus on his personal statistics, he then joined the list of players who Rafael Benitez has fallen out with and was first axed and then sold by the Spaniard only for the former Liverpool manager to be sacked himself just three days later.
Benitez had already signed Digne’s Everton successor Vitalii Mykolenko but while the Ukrainian has had his moments, he’s still very much adjusting to the demands of the Premier League and has been caught out on several occasions this season. Unlike Digne, he’s far from the finished article but less than 12 months after making what looked like something of a sideways step, the 29-year-old saw Emery sign Alex Moreno, and is now having to fight to retain his place in the side.
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