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There are some nights when you can almost feel an FA Cup surprise in the air around you. This, from a very early stage, was not one of them. Everton and Sheffield Wednesday have played in the final twice, but here, you just felt like it would be the Premier League side whose ambitions would continue for at least another round.
In truth, things couldn’t have gone much better for Carlo Ancelotti against a team whose recent form and performance is far more impressive than their position in the league suggests. As such, that made this a potentially difficult draw to navigate, but the way Everton did the job will have been very encouraging. Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s return from an injury marked with a goal, James Rodriguez once again looking back to a place close to his prime, and debuts for academy graduates Thierry Small and Tyler Onyango, the first to be he becomes the club’s youngest player in the process, aged 16. years and 176 days.
This was, all things considered, as perfect a night as any Everton supporter could have hoped for. “We were dominant from start to finish,” said Everton assistant coach Duncan Ferguson after they drew with Wycombe or Tottenham in the next round. “We were a bit worried at halftime that we didn’t get second, but during the 90 minutes we were really dominant.”
The credit should go to Sheffield Wednesday, in the championship relegation zone, but on a recent run of form since the firing of Tony Pulis, suggesting they are capable of getting out of trouble. The way they were applied here against a far superior team suggests that their season doesn’t go beyond swapping with their interim manager, Neil Thompson.
But this was always a case of when, rather than if, Everton put this tie to bed. In the end, it was two goals in three minutes on either side of the hour mark that answered that question. Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper Joe Wildsmith had done a good job keeping them in the tie up to that point, but couldn’t avoid the goals that ended as a competition.
Rodriguez, whose passing seemed his best measure all night, provided the deliveries: first for Richarlison to head home, before Yerry Mina did the same two minutes later, seconds after an impressive Wildsmith stop denied him to Richarlison his second. Sheffield Wednesday really gave it a go, but they could do little with their opponents’ attacking style and prowess.
“We know they have a lot of quality all over the field,” Thompson admitted. “You have to be on top throughout the field, but we just needed to penetrate them a little more and have a little more quality in the last third. We came off the blocks too slowly after half time. ”His team was certainly punished for that lethargy ruthlessly with the second and third goals.
However, Everton could, and perhaps should, have been further ahead than the advantage of a goal they had scored at halftime. When Calvert-Lewin drove André Gomes’ spot ball home in the face of Wildsmith’s goal for his 15th of the season, and the first since early December, the hosts had long taken the lead. “We are delighted for him,” Ferguson said of Calvert-Lewin, who led the Everton line impressively.
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Richarlison had already seen a goal disallowed for offside, while Calvert-Lewin came close to turning a Gylfi Sigurdsson cross home. At the other extreme, Robin Olsen parried an attack from Adam Reach in the early moments, but that was possibly the most serious threat he faced all night. The visitors, as their coach acknowledged, lacked the attacking power to really upset Everton, but their energy will give them hope.
However, this was a night where Ancelotti’s team returned to a place as the best, with Richarlison and Mina’s headers no less than their deserved dominance. There are quite a few teams in the round of 16 that will be delighted to have a chance to end their long wait to lift the Cup. Why not Everton? Certainly, there was nothing to argue against that perspective here.
