Sports
Everton vs Crystal Palace: When Premier League survival seemed like a World Cup trophy
The stands emptied and the pitch filled with the people. Blue smoke clogged the air, and they sang songs of grand delusion. About playing beautiful football, about being the greatest team the world has ever seen. History, grandeur, shining brightly, everything that has been missing from this season.
And yet, we understand. This is a grand club, with a grand story behind it. And the way they survived as a Premier League entity was truly quite incredible. From 2-0 down to 3-2 up. From sleepwalking over the canyon to relegation, to one mighty leap to safety on the other side.
They are clear now. They are secure for another year. These are words Evertonians never thought they would hear. Certainly not at half-time. What a comeback this was. From nowhere really. The first 45 minutes was as bad as Everton have been this season, and there’s some fair competition in that area. The second? It was as good as it gets.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s winner, five minutes from time, was greeted by a foolish pitch invasion, which may bring the attention of the authorities — especially after footage emerged of Patrick Vieira appearing to kick an Everton fan who had run on — but the sense of release was simply overwhelming.
After the second goal the last 15 minutes of the game was played out in a haze of acrid blue and a mood of crazy abandon. It had been like that before the game, the smoke alarms removed inside the Goodison Road entrances and corridors after being constantly triggered by flares.
There were silences after Crystal Palace scored, and news that Burnley initially led against Aston Villa hardly improved matters, but by the end this old ground felt unhinged, almost without boundaries. Fans sat on the crossbar as police cleared the pitch.
We had to keep reminding ourselves: this is a club finishing 16th. This is a club who have spent money to achieve European football and have ended up avoiding the Championship by a handful of points. There will be some mockery around that from the red half of this city. Maybe they could offer to share their open bus parade.
Yet somehow, amid the madness, Everton emerged with their sanity and their place in the Premier League intact. Frank Lampard had his name sung loud into the night. The players who, at times, have been hated were celebrated like heroes. It is amazing what a good 45 minutes can do.
For at half-time, Everton looked done. In the match that would define their season, they had turned in their poorest performance. Yet from there, Everton located fight mode and Crystal Palace were unable to resist them.
There were league places at stake for Palace, and maybe a top-half finish, but Everton’s situation was drastic and they ended up wanting it more. They scored three goals in 30 minutes, enough to lift them away from Burnley and Leeds who continue their fight to the bitter end. Arsenal away is just another fixture for Everton now.
This wasn’t. This felt like a life or death struggle from the start and certainly at the mid-point Everton were being measured up by the Co-Op. From somewhere, they found the resolve. The goals came not in a tension-releasing glut, but spread through an incredible second half, the pressure intensifying minute by minute.
The goals were scrappy, hard fought, much like this victory. For the first, after 54 minutes, Mason Holgate headed down for Michael Keane who showed excellent poise and balance to prod the ball into the net. For the second, a Dele Alli cross should have been cleared before Richarlison hooked the ball past Jack Butland in goal.
The third was a Demarai Gray free-kick, powered into the net by the head of Calvert-Lewin. Goodison erupted. The move to the new stadium is vital, of course, but will it ever produce noise quite like this? Unlikely.
Yet a game that began with such sound and fury, lapsed into eerie silence and occasional bursts of white hot fury as Everton’s season was played out in a first-half microcosm. Heavens, it was a poor start from the home side. Toothless in attack, woeful in defence. They looked like a relegation team and calling it a Championship performance would actually be an insult. There are teams in the league below better than Everton showed prior to half-time.
One little cameo summed it up. Everton won a corner which Anthony Gordon bunged tamely into the first yellow-shirted Palace defender. On the touchline Lampard applauded encouragingly. He put one in mind of the coach of an Under 11 team, staying upbeat as little Johnny booted another one behind the goal. All that frustration channelled as positive energy. Not that it did any good.
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