Limp loss to Sunderland feels like Groundhog Day for Moyes and Everton

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The most depressing part about the all-but-official end of Everton’s European hopes was that it was almost entirely predictable. As Sunderland slammed the final nail in the continental competition coffin, it was hard not to feel like this was Groundhog Day.

​Everton had failed to win in five before the final home fixture of the campaign, but the team sheet told a different story.

​Unchanged for the third straight game, David Moyes again placed his trust in a team that had squandered leads against Manchester City and Crystal Palace. Hindsight is wonderful, but as Everton again gave up a lead, was anyone truly surprised? What’s the definition of insanity, again?

​Everton’s opener had been a stroke of good fortune. Merlin Rohl, one of the few to recently disrupt the ‘settled’ side Moyes has preferred this season, opened his account with the help of a wicked deflection.

A half-time lead, and with Brentford losing, the Blues were, briefly, in the European places. How it unravelled.

​The build-up to Sunderland’s equaliser perhaps summarised Everton across the run-in, and for much of the campaign. A brilliant breakaway broke down as Iliman Ndiaye’s slack pass was cut out, with the visitors charging down the other end to level. Jake O’Brien’s loose touch was pounced upon, and Brian Brobbey bullied James Tarkowski on route to goal. Everton’s failings in both boxes once more on show, a microcosm of the campaign.

​Sunderland’s second stunned Hill Dickinson Stadium, but it was no less than they deserved. The visitors were more composed, more committed to winning a game that was there to be won. Enzo Le Fee soaked in the celebrations, while Jordan Pickford will not want to watch it back. Unsighted, perhaps, but a weak hand nonetheless.

​Moyes’s management continued the predictability theme. Beto brought off for Barry. 73 minutes on the clock. It didn’t need a crystal ball to see what was coming. Beto has started 17 games in the Premier League this season and has been substituted in the window between 64 and 81 minutes in 14 of them. Groundhog Day.

​Tyrique George, introduced alongside him, offered something Barry did not. A lively cameo included a fizzed cross that O’Brien somehow headed straight at Robin Roefs. After one start and less than 200 minutes of Premier League football, George must be wondering whether he’d have been better served sticking around at Chelsea.

​Sunderland’s stoppage-time third summarised an afternoon few will want to revisit, a collaborative defensive disaster class. Vitallii Mykolenko tracked Habib Diarra’s run with an inexcusable lack of urgency, before Michael Keane and Seamus Coleman gave the ‘corridor of uncertainty’ a whole new meaning. Wilson Isidor gratefully accepted the gift.

​And there, up in smoke, went Everton’s European dream. A wretched run-in has undone what had been a promising position, in a season where a place in Europe was there to be taken. The Finch Farm mirrors need to receive some long looks over the summer.

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