Everton 1 Norwich 1 - Ten Things We Now Know

1 Great to finally get to Goodison, 18 years late

Norwich in their now traditional huddle

Poor weather in the North West on Thursday and Friday almost put paid to my first trip to Goodison, but getting there was vital in order to complete a bit of unfinished business. My first game was Norwich v Everton at Carrow Road in November 1984, a season in which The Toffees won the title and had a hand in relegating Norwich when they played a sub-strength team in their final game against Coventry.
Since then a clash between the two teams has been special to me and, back in September 1993 aged 18, I was desperate to go up to Goodison and watch the Premier League game between the teams.
My late pal Jake had just passed his driving test and the plan was to borrow his parents' car and shoot up to Liverpool for the day. Unfortunately his mum had other ideas and told him it was too far for a novice 18-year-old to drive. Worse still, the train was too expensive and Club Canary was full up.
Annoyed but not disheartened and being keen football fans we decided to go to a game on the spare Saturday and scoured Ceefax for somewhere closer to go. We ended up taking the shorter trip to Watford for their Division One clash with Sunderland. It was a dreadful game and ended 0-0. We left the ground for the drive back to Norwich and over the tannoy heard the almost unbelievable score of Everton 1 Norwich 5.

2 Goodison Park rivals Craven Cottage for a rare old bit of tradition in the Premier League.
I love Carrow Road and I love old grounds, but watching modern football is a big mix of grounds that need to be knocked down, grounds that have been knocked down and replaced by ubiquitous bowls, grounds that are a shadow of their former selves and the four blue shoeboxes that make up Loftus Road. Goodison Park is a bit tatty in places, but has a lovely old feel to it, as do the club themselves. After walking across the famous Stanley Park and getting inside the ground it's great sitting in a stand with a wooden floor (I thought they'd actually been banned!), great to see the church in the corner, great to hear the Z Cars theme, and great to see the Toffee Lady throwing sweets into the crowd. Only Craven Cottage has as much old time appeal as Goodison among Premier League grounds I have visited.

3 Tradition aside, Everton are really underperforming this season.

This was my first trip to Goodison

'In Moyes We Trust' read a sign inside the ground. There's a similar sign at The Emirates Stadium and just like Arsenal fans started to doubt The Gunners' long-serving manager earlier this season there must be doubts creeping into Everton fans that perhaps David Moyes can't do much more for the club than he's done over the last seven odd years.
Moyes' Everton side has struggled this season - Tim Cahill hasn't scored for a year, Marouane Fellaini looks a better player than he is and Louis Saha just doesn't have the cutting edge up front. The Toffees top scorer is Apostolos Velios who has only started two games. Home defeats to Stoke and QPR this season plus  two points dropped against Norwich is a poor return for a club that should be beating teams like that on their own patch.

4 The stats didn't lie though, Everton were much the better side.
Everton had 15 shots on target to our one and had 13 corners to our none. Everton dominated everything in the game until City scored, did most of the pressing after that and, although City went close through Grant Holt again in the second half, it was all Everton. But, just like at Liverpool in October, we kept our shape and dug in. Even at half time, myself and my mate Gordon were both convinced Everton would win the game. This game will definitely be classed in the category of fortunate points on the road.

5 When will Grant Holt earn praise from the Match of the Day pundits?

Lovely old tradition - The Toffee Lady hands out sweets

Sitting in the corner of the upper tier of the Bullens Road stand, Grant Holt's goal was about 100 yards away from me and all I really saw of it was the ball slowly creep into the corner of the net.
Later on the telly I took in its full beauty - what a finish!
Yet despite this, Mark Lawrenson described him as a 'battering ram', said the goal was all about Jonny Heitinga's poor defending and found it hard to give any praise to Holt. He's scored seven goals before Christmas, Morison has six. Between them they're only two goals off the totals of QPR and West Brom this season!
Aside from the goal, Holt's best moment was when he chased down a backpass, scared the living daylights out of Tim Howard and won a throw deep in Everton territory. I can't believe a player like Fernando Torres would try that. Holt plays just like he did when we were in League One - and look at the results!

6 I was surprised by the amount of empty seats in the City end.
I sat upstairs and, while the lower tier seemed pretty full, there must have been space for another 700 fans up stairs. Perhaps as it's near Christmas and there's a game at Wolves on Tuesday, but I thought we'd have taken more than we did. Tickets for away games have actually been reasonably easy to come by this season, but when the cost of petrol, ticket, parking and a night in a Travelodge comes to around £100 each, it's easy to see why City fans stayed away.

7 Zak Whitbread and Russell Martin were superb.

Everton had 13 corners, we had none

Plenty was made last week about Newcastle's lack of central defenders, but our central defence at Everton was made up of a right back and a centre half who has been mainly injured this season. Whitbread's played well for the last two games (forget his involvement in Demba Ba's second goal, that was Andrew Surman's fault) and along with Martin they were really strong against Everton's attackers. With Elliot Ward on the way back and hopefully Daniel Ayala too, we've suddenly got some options at the back.

8 But John Ruddy was the man of the match by a mile.
What is it about Ruddy and Merseyside? He was brilliant at Anfield and had the same kind of performance against Everton. Some brilliant saves, the one in the first half where he rushed out at Fellaini's feet was great, as was the parry from Royston Drenthe's curling, swirling missile late on. Great keeper and on the weekend that it was announced no Euro 2012 players would figure in the British Olympic football team, that must throw down the possibility that Ruddy could be in the Olympic team next summer.

Holt and Jagielka get a talking to

9 Surman watch: Still not much going on.
I thought Surman was awful against Newcastle, yet he kept his place against Everton. He got stuck in a bit more, but still looks the one player under-performing for me. David Fox had a good game and Andrew Crofts saw a lot of the ball, but Surman? I just don't get it. Come on Andrew, prove me wrong.

10 Proud to say I was there the day Zlatan made his Premier League bow.
Talk in the car on the way up between myself and Gordon was about the ins and outs at Carrow Road in January and the name of Zlatan Wilbrahamovic cropped up. I pointed out that he'd been named on the bench for the past few games and that at some point he would have to make his top flight debut. Sure enough, with City 1-0 up and with ten minutes later, he came on for Steve Morison. He looked a tad thinner than the last time I saw him play, and sure enough, within two minutes, we'd conceded a goal!
It wasn't his fault, but surely we need to boost our options from the bench in January. Other Premier League clubs bring on seasoned internationals to change games - surely we can't go on much longer bringing on players like Wilbraham?