Garnacho does a madness, eclipsing Rooney and briefly silencing a febrile Goodison Park

Dave Tickner
Alejandro Garnacho scores an overhead kick for Manchester United at Everton
Alejandro Garnacho scores at Everton

It was going to take something extraordinary to silence Goodison Park at its most furiously volatile.

Three minutes into Everton’s first game since the perceived injustice of their 10-point penalty, Alejandro Garnacho did just that with a goal of staggering and timeless quality.

The instant debate raged over whether his overhead kick here was better than Wayne Rooney’s, a debate that hinges entirely on whether you think it’s more or less impressive to send the ball arrowing into the top corner off your shinbone.

Garnacho’s was certainly the cleaner strike, and required (even) greater elastic agility to get to a ball sent his way with more pace and less accuracy than Rooney’s iconic strike.

It was, frankly, a bit f***ing much. Garnacho, unlike Rooney, has never really before shown any inclination to do something so absurd as this. To do it three minutes into a game against a club already feeling sick about just about everything is taking the piss.

When Goodison Park regained its voice, Everton’s players did respond. They ended the first half much the better side and really should have been level.

The second half, though, was a huge disappointment for the home side. The one thing we didn’t expect Everton to be today was limp and insipid. They had managed to avoid it after Garnacho’s logic-defying brilliance, but were unable to do so in the second. It was poor.

The crowd tried to remain involved but the clearest noise from the stands by the time United had gone 2-0 and 3-0 up was the gleeful refrain of ‘You’re going down with the City’ from the visiting fans.

The indignant fury of the first half’s protests – including a protracted firework display at one point – only once briefly threatened to be replicated in the second as Everton fans successfully worked themselves into a concocted rage at what they will in time concede was a straightforward VAR decision.

It’s where we are. Everton’s wider fury is righteous, and VAR is the very softest of establishment targets now. But really, the only surprise here was the on-field decision going Everton’s way after an already-cautioned Ashley Young hung out a daft leg that could only ever have unpleasant outcomes, duly tripping the onrushing Anthony Martial.

In this specific incident, Everton had absolutely no case. Young continues to look horribly off the Premier League pace since his move to Goodison.

By the time Martial himself clipped home a clever third the anger that had bubbled away in the ground had largely given way to a familiar despair. Everton have been rotten at home all season and this, once you stripped away the noise from the stands and the absurdity from Garnacho, was another disappointing performance. That 20-minute spell in the first half promised so much more.

In pragmatic relegation terms, they should still be fine because there are at least three teams worse than Everton and a long time to salvage things. But there’s no doubt that this weekend’s action will have sharpened focus. Despite the 10-point penalty, Everton began this weekend with the potential to end it back outside the dropzone. That would have sent quite a message. Instead, they currently sit five points adrift of safety and must, inevitably, be feeling it.

If Everton’s draconian punishment has given the bottom of the league a disorienting feel, United’s ongoing refusal to allow results to match their performances does likewise at the top.

This was their first win all season by more than a single goal and it leaves them – improbably, incongruously, yet inevitably – in the top six. They’re only four points off the top four. They’re only six points off the top.

Their all-or-nothing approach to a season still yet to feature a single draw has no doubt propelled the crisis talk around the club, but that’s now five wins out of six. That this was by far the most convincing win of United’s season in a game where they were still second best (quite comfortably) on xG can be twisted into either a massive positive or troubling negative if you’re so inclined.

Everton’s season is going to be dominated one way or another by a negative.