Richarlison scored his seventh goal of the season but Everton had to settle for a point from a 1-1 draw with a stubborn Newcastle United side.
Everton fell behind to a Salomon Rondon goal on 19 minutes but hit back when Richarlison pounced at a corner seven minutes before half-time.
The Blues hogged possession and fashioned a succession of opportunities – they had 18 shots to Newcastle’s eight – but could not claim the goal which would have banked an extra two points.
Rondon’s strike was out of keeping with the vast majority of what had gone before and as such arrived as something of a sucker punch for Marco Silva’s team.
Everton believed Ademola Lookman was fouled as Newcastle wrested back possession in the centre of the park, a view not shared by referee Lee Mason.
Josh Murphy escaped down the left and sent a skidding cross to the back post where the powerful Rondon arrived to thud the ball back across Jordan Pickford and high into the net.
Everton had created a flood of chances until this point. Cenk Tosun and Andre Gomes both shot over, before Tosun zipped in front of centre-back Federico Fernandez to meet Lucas Digne’s cross with a header which flashed past the near post.
Digne was consistently breaking deep into Newcastle territory – his efforts matched on the other side by Seamus Coleman who was prevented from getting on the end of an inswinging Gomes delivery by Martin Dubravka, racing out to punch clear.
It was French defender Digne, though, who continued to drive forward with purpose, linking neatly with Richarlison and providing a reliable outlet for his midfielders.
Digne was the man backing up, too, when Richarlison had a low shot blocked, the left-back taking aim with his right boot but dispatching his effort down the throat of the excellent Dubravka.
Richarlison, back on the left following an extended run as Everton’s centre-forward, hit a pass down Everton’s left flank on 35 minutes.
Digne chased it down and cut the ball back across the box for Gylfi Sigurdsson. The midfielder took a touch to compose himself and drew back his foot. With the Gwladys Street End anticipating the net bulging in front of them, Fernandez appeared dramatically on the scene to repel Sigurdsson’s effort.
Newcastle, now, were in danger of digging a trench.
Lookman was denied a penalty after going down with Mohamed Diame in close attendance, with Richarlison descending on the scraps but seeing his strike turned behind by Dubravka.
The Brazilian did not have to wait long for another go.
Sigurdsson’s outswinging corner somehow eluded a mass of bodies in the penalty box, right until it progressed to Jamaal Lascelles. And the Newcastle captain probably wished it had evaded him, too, the ball striking Lascelles’ right heel and rolling back towards goal, where Richarlison scooped his finish into the roof of the net.
Everton would have turned the match on its head before the break but for the brilliance of Dubravka, who saved point blank from Tosun in stoppage time after Digne’s latest surge down the left.
The interval disrupted Everton’s rhythm rather.Christian Atsu’s shot which was comfortably held by Pickford around the hour mark, meanwhile, indicated Newcastle had got their second wind.
Manager Silva summoned Theo Walcott and Bernard from the bench midway through the half, Sigurdsson and Tosun making way.
Tosun’s final involvement had seen him act as the foil in a flowing Everton raid. Gomes facilely dispossessed Ayoze Perez, on for Murphy, and got the ball back much higher up the pitch from Lookman. Gomes passed to Tosun, who shifted the ball right again for Richarlison. The South American, though, buried his shot in the side netting.
Walcott was in the action in no time, sent sprinting clear by Pickford’s volleyed pass but unable to tame a bouncing ball. When he did gather it in, Walcott’s effort deflected behind off Atsu, who had chased back 60 yards to do his bit for his team.
Everton were pushing Newcastle further and further into their own territory. But after Bernard has missed his kick in the box, the hosts could twice have been dealt the most concussive of blows. Pickford stretched out a hand to save Atsu’s late shot before the goalkeeper had the easier task of collecting the ball at his feet after Atsu rushed his attempt when free in the box.
Those moments of concern sandwiched a free-kick from Lucas Digne which was struck too high to trouble Dubravka.
That moment was greeted with cheers from the travelling supporters. So too the final whistle, which brought confirmation Newcastle had frustrated Everton’s attempts to win a fifth home match on the spin.
General GomesAndre Gomes – in common with his fellow summer arrivals to Goodison Park – has required very little time to demonstrate precisely why Marco Silva brought him to the Club.
The Portuguese in fact took all of 82 minutes – the length of time he spent on the pitch on his debut against Crystal Palace – to convince Evertonians they might just have a gem on their hands.
It was Gomes’s raking pass to Ademola Lookman, hit flat and with pace from the centre of the park to his teammate on the right, which injected the purpose into an attack which did not let up until Richarlison struck high into the net.
Gomes had already been drawing gasps from his admiring audience, the midfielder’s effortless passing with both feet and ability to create time and space for himself amid the engine room fury an absolute joy.
Everton were operating at a possession share of around 75 per cent and Gomes was dictating a good deal of what they did with it.
It is a gauge of the 25-year-old’s quality that he records high passing accuracy figures as a matter of course.
The proliferation of statistics in the game, it is suspected, leads some footballers to take the safer option, lest their numbers stack up unfavourably.
Gomes, though, passes forward, threading the ball through narrow corridors.
He sees the angles and knows when to release the ball – and understands when he would be better served holding onto it, rolling it under his foot to open up the pitch and buy his teammates an extra second to make their move.
His ability to surge through midfield with the ball at his feet is almost unique among central midfielders in the Premier League. It can be destructive, too, carrying him to the other side of his opponents in midfield and into the faces of retreating defences.
A tall and strongly-built man, he is very hard to stop when he gets in his stride.
Roaming RichieIt was back to the left wing for Richarlison on a night when he struck his seventh Premier League goal of the season.
It is easy to see why Marco Silva thinks so much of his Brazilian attacker, who combines pace, skill and impudence with an insatiable appetite for hard work.
Give him a job to do and he will not leave you short changed.
Richarlison scored three goals in five games on the left wing, before switching to play as a striker for seven matches and adding a further three.
He wasted no time rekindling his relationship with Lucas Digne here, the duo linking on innumerable occasions as Everton consistently explored the space down Newcastle’s right.
Richarlison is a brave footballer, too. In the sense that, as one of team’s prime threats, he comes in for a fair amount of ‘treatment’. But also in his willingness to continually show for possession, to forget a missed chance and immediately get in position to have another go.
His goal hauled Everton level and swung the momentum of the contest firmly back in the hosts favour.
Richarlison chased and hassled all night. The sight of the 21-year-old haring back into his own half to retrieve possession is growing more and more common.
And when Silva wanted to make changes in the second half, he could count on Richarlison to go and do a job through the middle again. Initially by himself and then in tandem with Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Another very good night’s work from this talented footballer.
Lookman’s Look-inNo footballer would particularly want to attract the tag of super-sub, whether intended as a compliment or not. Needs must sometimes, though. And Ademola Lookman, by dint of his performances whenever he came off the bench this season, was acquiring quite the reputation for being a very handy asset to have up your sleeve as a game entered its business end.
Indeed, Marco Silva disclosed last week that Lookman was doing enough in training and on his weekly cameos to start matches.
And this game against Newcastle, coming so soon after Sunday’s Merseyside derby, represented an opportunity to give the 21-year-old winger his head.
Lookman needed 10 minutes or so to find his feet here. Which was perfectly understandable. He had actually played only 174 minutes of football all told in his eight substitute outings this term.
Remarkable to think, too, this was only his fifth Premier League start, two fewer than he has made in Germany’s Bundesliga.
In his early eagerness to make an impression, he conceded a couple of free-kicks when chasing back to lend a hand – albeit the second for a challenge on Ki Sung-yueng looked very harsh.
We associate Lookman with his dashes down the wing but he first showed up in an attacking sense with a swerve of his body in the middle of the pitch which utterly deceived a scrum of opponents enveloping him.
His ensuing pass, caressed forward to Andre Gomes, was fast and accurate and sprung Everton onto the attack.
After briefly switching flanks with Richarlison, Lookman returned to the right to power his way beyond the far bigger Mohamed Diame and create a shooting opportunity which he sent over the top.
The warning had been served, though. In the very next passage of play, Lookman received the ball with his back to goal and promptly had his ankles rapped by defender Federico Fernandez, conceding a free-kick rather than risk being fronted up by his man.
A measured pass to slip in the overlapping Seamus Coleman was weighted perfectly and talked to Lookman’s appreciation of what was happening around him.
Silva gave Lookman a notable vote of confidence when removing Gylfi Sigurdsson and Cenk Tosun, while asking the Englishman to go and play on the left.
Lookman was tasked with delivering Everton’s set-pieces, too, and struck two corners which caused panic in the visitors’ ranks.
The ovation Lookman received when he his number did come up on 78 minutes was thoroughly well deserved.
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