To lose once after leading 2-0 could be deemed misfortune; to do so twice in succession smacks of carelessness. Not even Oscar Wilde would have come up with a script such as this but then the narrative around Everton pushes the bounds of credulity on a weekly basis.
Lee Carsley, the interim England manager, was in attendance to see Ollie Watkins, who withdrew from his first squad through injury, score twice as Aston Villa followed Bournemouth’s example by giving Everton a two-goal lead before winning, this time with an outrageous long-distance shot from Jhon Durán.
Villa, who return to European football’s top table on Tuesday when they travel to Switzerland to play Young Boys in the Champions League, climbed back into third place in the Premier League. Only once before in their previous 10 Premier League seasons have Villa won three of their first four league games.
For Everton, however, this feels like rock bottom.
But then we said that after they allowed Bournemouth to win the game with three goals from the 87th minute. This is the first time they have lost their first four league games since 1958. Next Saturday’s trip to Leicester looks significant.
It is said that leading 2-0 can be a tricky scoreline for a team to protect. Everton fans particularly would have vouched for that after their disastrous collapse against Bournemouth a fortnight ago. But they were in dreamland within half an hour here, as Dwight McNeil scored one goal and made another for Dominic Calvert-Lewin, only to feel the nightmare threatening to return when Ollie Watkins pulled one back before half-time.
No one could have complained about value for money in a thrillingly oscillating first half. The proposed protest against Villa’s prices for Champions League tickets fizzled out before it began – a planned march up Trinity Road was cancelled, and only a tiny proportion of the 16,000 printed red and black cards were held up – and Unai Emery’s side started with purpose, Watkins twice going close.
Yet Everton fans, whom most neutrals would agree have far more to complain about than their counterparts here, were soon celebrating. Of the five players up against their former teams, Amadou Onana perhaps had the most on his shoulders after his £50m switch this summer. He has started his Villa career well but here he started sluggishly and McNeil dispossessed him in the 16th minute before driving towards the left hand edge of the penalty area, sidestepping Ezri Konsa with ease and drilling in his low shot into the far corner.
The Everton fans chanted “Amadou Onana” ironically and their spirits were lifted even higher when McNeil swung in a cross from the right wing for Calvert-Lewin to time his run perfectly and follow up his goal against Bournemouth by heading home from inside the six-yard area. He became the first Everton player to score a league goal at Villa Park since Romelu Lukaku.
Yet Everton, however well they were playing in parts, and however diligently they organised, remain vulnerable.
A club where a prospective owner can start casting doubts over his manager’s selection policy before he has even sold his shares in his current club, John Textor having asked whether Sean Dyche was the sort to pick more sophisticated players, Everton fans are all too accustomed to things going wrong even when they seem to be going right.
So when Watkins climbed high and aggressively to head in Lucas Digne’s left-wing cross for his first goal of the season, everyone in the ground was anticipating this game was unlikely to finish 2-1. Villa fans recognised Onana’s superb pass to Digne in the buildup, singing his name back at the travelling comics.
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The resident DJ was not slow to remind home fans that Villa matches are worth the entrance fee as he played Robbie Williams’s Let Me Entertain You during the interval.
The second half started as the first had finished. Morgan Rogers’ effort was repelled by Jordan Pickford and Jacob Ramsey’s follow-up was cleared by James Garner.
How Calvert-Lewin will rue the chance he passed up, after being sent clear by McNeil only to allow Konsa to catch up and clear after he’d rounded Emiliano Martínez. Within four minutes Watkins equalised, as Jack Harrison, preventing Youri Tielemans’ great through ball to Digne, only succeeded in passing straight to the England striker six yards from goal.
Watkins almost had his hat-trick but could not slide home Rogers’ pass across goal, nor turn in Ian Maatsen’s pull-back; that was his seventh clearcut chance.
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With Emery making attacking substitutions, both to try to win the game, and to rotate before Tuesday’s opening Champions League game away to Young Boys, a winning goal looked inevitable. And sure enough Durán came up with a magical strike 13 minutes from time, unloading a fulminating strike from 30 yards into the top corner.
There was still time for Calvert-Lewin to shoot against the underside of the crossbar. What price Premier League excitement like this?