Shay Given’s own goal gives dominant Everton victory over Stoke

When history repeats itself, it can accentuate the sense of frustration. As far as the officials are concerned, it demonstrates an inability to learn their lessons. For the second consecutive week, Stoke City were deemed guilty of failing to heed the new directives about grappling in the box. For a second successive Saturday, they conceded a spot kick that helped condemn them to defeat.

Here, Leighton Baines’s penalty went in via a combination of the goalkeeper Shay Given and the post. Last week, Ryan Shawcross was penalised for grabbing Manchester City’s Nicolás Otamendi. When the referee, Michael Oliver, ruled Phil Bardsley shoved Ashley Williams, Stoke’s handiwork meant they slumped to the foot of the embryonic table.

They are winless and, in their eyes, luckless. “It has happened to me in the past with previous teams. Whenever there is a purge, teams like ourselves seem to get the thin end of the wedge,” lamented their manager, Mark Hughes, betraying the hints of a persecution complex.

“We are being punished. Ashley Williams has gone down, whether he clipped his own heels or he has stepped across Phil Bardsley but there was no pushing and no pulling. Phil is very disappointed. It wasn’t instigated by him. I thought it was very harsh.”

The sympathetic Everton manager concurred. “I can understand why Mark Hughes is angry,” said Ronald Koeman after recording his first home league win. Both managers highlighted an incident earlier in the day at White Hart Lane, when Tottenham Hotspur’s Jan Vertonghen was only warned for tugging Liverpool’s Joël Matip. “That wasn’t given, maybe because it was two high-profile teams on the television and maybe they don’t get those penalties given against them,” Hughes lamented. A calmer Koeman stated: “That is not consistent.”

Stoke were left contemplating requesting another meeting with the referees’ general manager, Mike Riley, or switching from man-marking, a staple of Hughes’s management, to zonal marking, or merely hoping referees will be less officious. “Hopefully it will settle down and everyone will revert to a bit of sanity,” Hughes said.

Yet he weakened his case to be seen as the voice of reason by claiming little separated the teams. “You look at the productivity with 18 shots and nine on target,” Koeman countered. “They had not one shot on target.”

That overlooked the moment, seven minutes after Baines’s penalty, when he volleyed the ball off his line after Marko Arnautovic’s effort was deflected on to the bar by Maarten Stekelenburg but it was a sign the Austrian posed the sole threat. Stoke seemed intent on a damage-limitation exercise. Hughes demoted Bojan Krkic to the bench in favour of a more physical attack. Its most conspicuous member was Peter Crouch, selected after an EFL Cup hat-trick at Stevenage but on a 15-month wait for a top-flight strike. Crouch has long demonstrated his agility in penalty boxes. Even at 35, he did so again to execute a spectacular clearance, hooking away Williams’s header and denying the £12m arrival a goal to mark his first league start.

It was sandwiched by two other goal‑saving interventions, each from Ryan Shawcross to thwart Romelu Lukaku. The Belgian delayed too long before shooting in the first half; in the second, he slipped the ball past the otherwise excellent Given before Shawcross’s rescue act. “Offensively we can do better,” Koeman said.

If Shawcross’s twin exercises in defiance indicated his powers of recovery, they also felt timely as Sam Allardyce watched on while he finalises his first England squad. Yet the Stoke captain’s struggle to contain Lukaku underlined the concern that a defender whose sole taste of international football was notable for Zlatan Ibrahimovic scoring four times can be found wanting against top-class strikers.

Hughes feels that the centre‑back’s reputation precedes him in other respects. Media coverage of grappling, he argued, is invariably illustrated by images of Shawcross. “He is not the only one but whenever it gets mentioned there is a picture of Ryan Shawcross,” he argued.

Koeman had a more appealing view as he contemplated a league table that shows Everton third. “Maybe it is good to take a picture of that,” he said with a smile. Progress is being reflected in results. Stekelenburg, one of his signings, is performing so well that he sees little need to borrow Joe Hart. “He is not a third or second[-choice] goalkeeper.” He was defiant, too, in insisting that James McCarthy, who was omitted as Everton wait to discover if he needs groin surgery, is going nowhere. He said: “Players like McCarthy need to stay and we like to keep everybody.”