The game’s gone, part 999. The Wolves recovery continued at Everton yet their impressive resolve under Rob Edwards was overshadowed by the ludicrous red card that should embarrass Professional Match Game Officials and the Premier League.
Common sense and elite level referees parted company long ago but the decision to dismiss Michael Keane for violent conduct after he pulled Tolu Arokodare’s dreadlocks while challenging for a header defied belief. João Neves and Jack Stephens on Marc Cucurella this was not. Once Thomas Kirk was sent to the pitchside monitor by the video assistant referee, Chris Kavanagh, however, the league’s newest referee was never going to challenge his superiors by asking where their senses had gone.
Keane was duly shown a straight red card and must serve a three-match ban unless Everton appeal and win. Jack Grealish received the first red card of his Premier League career minutes later for two bookable shows of dissent in quick succession. Everton, comfortable before Edwards’s substitutions sparked a vast second-half improvement from Wolves, would have been punished further but for a magnificent fingertip save by Jordan Pickford to deny Hugo Bueno in stoppage time.
To say David Moyes was incandescent over Keane’s dismissal would rank as the understatement of the season. The Everton manager struggled to contain profanities as he raged at the state of officiating in the Premier League. “It is not violent, it is not forceful and it is not deliberate,” Moyes said. “So it shouldn’t have been a red card. It was a really poor decision to send him to the screen in the first place. Cucurella got his hair pulled – violent conduct, a deliberate action, no problem with that. But this was in the game, on a ball coming up.
“I have been a centre-half and there is no way I am jumping to outjump a big centre-forward and think: ‘By the way I am going to outjump him and at the same time I am going to pull his hair.’ I don’t know anyone on the planet who is good enough to think that way. It was a ridiculous decision by the referee but more by VAR. It can’t be violent conduct for that. Ridiculous. Hopeless.”
Edwards apologised for “doing an Arsène Wenger impression” and claimed he had only seen the incident once on the giant screens, which prompted howls of derision from the home crowd and several Everton players to put their heads in their hands. Keane’s dismissal came in the 83rd minute, Grealish’s in the 90th, and the Wolves head coach was more concerned with his team’s inability to capitalise against nine men during nine minutes of added time. But he could take immense heart from their second-half performance and a third game unbeaten for the league’s bottom club. It was so nearly a second successive win, too.
Everton controlled a low-quality first half without facing any serious threat. Moyes’s side opened the scoring when Dwight McNeil swung over a free-kick from the left and João Gomes, beating James Tarkowski to the ball, headed a clearance straight to Tim Iroegbunam. The Everton midfielder miscued a shot across the face of goal but Keane reacted superbly to volley into the roof of José Sá’s net for his third goal of the campaign. The Everton central defender went close to his second goal of the game when heading a James Garner free-kick against a post.
Wolves were transformed by Edwards’s half-time introduction of André and the later arrival of Jørgen Strand Larsen. The towering striker had only been on the pitch a minute when he dropped deep to receive Yerson Mosquera’s pass out of defence, he then turned and dissected the Everton rearguard with a fine ball into the path of Mateus Mané. The hugely promising 18-year-old accelerated away from the static Jake O’Brien and Tarkowski to beat Pickford with a clinical finish into the bottom corner.
The visitors had grown in confidence and control before the equaliser but, despite the reds for Keane and Grealish, could not take full advantage. “We will fight until the end of the 38th game,” Edwards said.
