League Cup Round Four · Newcastle United (h) · W 3–1 · 29 October 2026

Garner and Hackney put Everton two up by half-time and Newcastle out of the League Cup

An hour before kick-off the club ruled Jack Grealish out for a breach of discipline, and Everton won without him.

Unashamedly written by a machine · The suffering is real

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Everton are in the quarter-finals of the League Cup after beating Newcastle 3–1 at Hill Dickinson on Thursday, on a night the club had opened an hour before kick-off by announcing that Jack Grealish was unavailable for a breach of discipline. For half an hour they were second best, until Tarkowski took the ball and Osula's ankle in one tackle and the evening turned: five minutes later Garner curled in Everton's first shot on target, Hackney scored his first goal for the club on the stroke of half-time after the referee had played on through a foul, and Barry killed the tie with his seventh of the season. Burn's late header, Newcastle's one goal from twenty-eight shots, produced a scuffle in the net and four yellow cards, and nothing more. It was Everton's first win of any kind since Ipswich on 19 September, and Fleetwood Town wait in the week of 14 December.

The Week Before

The week before was about an hour long. Moyes held no press conference, clubs not being obliged to give one before a League Cup tie until the semi-finals, and his programme notes said that a cup run "can help boost confidence, as well as having a positive impact on league form", which is the view every manager holds in the fourth round. Then, shortly after half past six, the team sheet arrived with a sentence nobody had drafted a question for. "Jarrad Branthwaite remains sidelined for a second successive game due to concussion protocols, while Jack Grealish is unavailable for selection due to a breach of Club discipline." The capital letter is the club's. The Echo understood within the hour that Grealish had not attended a training session after missing Arsenal through illness; the BBC's understanding was of an unauthorised absence from training. The club has said nothing more, and Moyes, afterwards, declined to.

The rest of the sheet was what the board had been asking for since the Wolves tie. Hackney and Dibling came in for Armstrong and Johnson, two changes from the Emirates; Röhl kept right-back, Mykolenko's calf passed its test, O'Brien stayed beside Tarkowski and George took the left that Grealish would have had. The bench had nine on it, which for this squad counts as plenty. Newcastle made one change from the side that won at Selhurst Park, Ramsey for Joelinton, and otherwise arrived as Jaissle had promised, Burn wearing the armband and Horníček keeping goal ahead of Pope, as he has in every round. Jaissle had told the Chronicle the tie would feel like a home game, with 7,732 Newcastle supporters in the ground, a figure the same paper gave as 7,722 by the end of the night.

TPF took the sheet at 18:35 and had "Finally Hackney & Dibling" posted within twenty minutes, followed by the thought that perhaps the manager had needed a prod. The Grealish line took over after that: "Send him back" from one end of the room, "Don't think sending him back is an option" from the other, and from somebody who had read the statement twice, "Literally swimming in it." A member on Sky Sports+ reported that the feed began twenty seconds before kick-off with no build-up. It was a dry, mild night, eleven or twelve degrees and overcast at kick-off, clearing a little later, with a breeze of about nine miles an hour; the BBC's reporter thought the pitch looked immaculate, and 51,894 came, which is a sell-out. Among them, in the directors' box, was Andy Burnham, whom every report in the record calls the Prime Minister.

The Match: Everton 3–1 Newcastle United

Burn won the toss and sent Everton towards the South Stand, where the flags were, and for twenty-five minutes the game went the way Jaissle had designed it. Everton started brightly enough, and the BBC's man found the ground bouncing at an early corner; the Newcastle end found its voice booing Pickford's first touch, which the Echo found unsurprising. Then Newcastle took the ball and kept it. In the twelfth minute González's raking pass found Barnes ghosting in behind Röhl and Pickford saved the header; in the fourteenth Everton were caught open on the break and the ball pinballed round the box before Pickford fell on it; in the seventeenth Willock's shot was dealt with and Schär's shot from distance palmed round the post inside a minute, after which Pickford ran out of his goal to deliver what the Echo's Beesley called a rollicking to Hackney. Mykolenko twice got in front of Ramsey, once with a block the Echo thought saved a goal. Everton's own best moment of the spell was Hackney's, unmarked in the area from Mykolenko's cross in the twentieth minute, which he hit so softly that Horníček gathered it like a back-pass; in the twenty-fourth he was about to roll in the rebound from George's deflected shot when Burn got there first. The Echo's verdict was that Everton suffered for half an hour, and it was not unfair.

The tackle came in the twenty-ninth minute, and it changed the evening. Dibling lost the ball to Willock, Osula ran through on Pickford, and as he pulled the trigger Tarkowski arrived across him and took the ball and, it turned out, Osula's ankle, which Jaissle said afterwards had twisted in the challenge. The Echo called it a monster challenge, the BBC a contender for tackle of the season, Izzy Christiansen on 5 Live an absolute crunching last-ditch tackle, and Tarkowski, who had written in his programme notes that the ground had not had many special nights under the lights yet and this could be one, looked for a moment as if he had decided to supply it himself. Five minutes later Everton scored with their first shot on target. George pressed Dedić by the corner flag, Dedić dallied and lost it, Hackney played a short pass inside to Garner on the edge of the area, and Garner wrapped his right foot round the ball and curled it past Horníček into the far corner. It was his first goal of the season, from the club's reigning Player of the Season, and by the Echo's reckoning he scored at the same end in the first competitive match played here, against Brighton last season, when he was playing left-back. The Prime Minister applauded. TPF had "Garners first goal" up at 20:19 and added, a minute later, "Much better!", which was generous to the half-hour before it.

Newcastle did not fold at once. Tarkowski blocked Ramsey and Willock fired the rebound wide; Barnes snatched at a half-volley in the thirty-ninth and dragged it past the post; in the forty-third Tarkowski raced to keep a ball in by the corner flag, hit the flag, appeared on the replay to have knocked the ball out, and was allowed to carry on by both referee and assistant. Then the two decisions. Barnes went down under Dewsbury-Hall in the box and appealed; Hallam waved it away; Barnes's next shot took a deflection and Pickford gathered it. Pickford threw the ball immediately to Dewsbury-Hall, who ran at the Newcastle midfield, was fouled by Ramsey and kept going because the referee let him. The ball reached Barry on the left of the area, and Barry, for whom the word is not usually composure, dug out a cross to the middle, where Hackney had kept running, and Hackney side-footed it in, or volleyed it, depending on whose report is open. It was his first goal for Everton, since joining from Middlesbrough for £16m in the summer, scored on the stroke of half-time on only his third start for the club, and Ramsey, who had stopped when the whistle did not come, was nowhere. TPF's reaction was the shortest thread of the night, his surname in capitals with the vowels stretched, and the sharpest: "Nice to celebrate a goal and not wait 3 mins for VAR." There was a huge roar at the whistle. Everton had been second best for most of the half and led by two, which is a thing the board has watched happen to other teams for years.

Jaissle changed three at the interval, Joelinton, Elanga and Wissa for Ramsey, Barnes and Osula, and Newcastle started the second half as they had the first. Murphy flashed a cross-shot across the face in the fifty-first minute; Wissa got to Willock's clipped ball in the fifty-third and Pickford was off his line to smother the header; Dedić's shot deflected off Hackney and looped over in the fifty-fifth, and the Echo's blog began to find the game far too open. Hackney was booked in the sixtieth for stopping Newcastle taking a quick free kick, having given away several, and was by then, in the blog's phrase, walking a tight line; the BBC's live page did not think his challenge on Hall a foul at all and noted the camera on Hackney shaking his head. Everton, meanwhile, had found one thing that worked, which was Dewsbury-Hall running at Dedić down the left, and in the fifty-eighth minute he glided past him and crossed for Barry without result. Moyes took Hackney off in the sixty-fifth, a sensible call with a card against him and Armstrong on the bench, and the ground stood up for him as he went.

Garner won the ball in midfield in the sixty-ninth minute and slid it down the left to Dewsbury-Hall, who steadied himself with the Newcastle defence, in the Chronicle's phrase, all at sea, and pulled a low cross back into the area. Barry drifted off Burn, took one touch to kill it and put it past Horníček, into the top corner by Sky's reading and with a confident side-foot by the Echo's; Christiansen called it a finishing drill, touch and finish, with no defender anywhere near him. It was his seventh goal of the season, in his eleventh start of eleven games. The Newcastle end began to leave, dozens and dozens of them by the BBC's count at 21:15, and the home end noticed. TPF marked the moment with a thread whose title, heavy with sarcasm, called the scorer a clueless player, addressed to a member who has spent the autumn arguing that Barry cannot play; the member replied, and the board was busy until bedtime.

The last twenty minutes were a different sort of game. Pickford and O'Brien threw themselves at everything Newcastle hit; Pickford saved from Willock soon after the third and O'Brien produced a block the Echo called great; Alcaraz and Johnson came on for George and Dibling in the seventy-sixth, and in the eighty-first Schär and Mykolenko were booked together for a scuffle in the Everton box, the first sign of what was coming. Steur came on for González with about ten minutes left, to a roar from the Newcastle end that the Chronicle read as a message to its manager. Maitland-Niles and Nørgaard replaced Mykolenko and Dewsbury-Hall in the eighty-sixth, by which time every Everton pass was being greeted with oles, and the home end sang a chant about the quality of the away support that the Echo printed with asterisks.

Burn's goal, in the eighty-ninth minute by the BBC's live text or the eighty-eighth by its key events and the record, came from Willock's cross from the left. Burn, who headed the opening goal of the 2025 final against Liverpool, rose highest at the back post above O'Brien, who was beaten, in Beesley's phrase, far too easily by the only man taller than him on the pitch. It mattered to nobody but the people it then involved. Pickford would not give the ball up, Burn went for it, the two of them scrapped in the net, Joelinton joined in, and Tarkowski, by the BBC's report, shoved Joelinton to the ground, or, by 5 Live's, pulled him away; the BBC's man in the press box could not see who was to blame and said so. Burn, Joelinton, Tarkowski and Pickford were booked, three minutes were added, and that was the tie. The honest reading is that Newcastle had twenty-eight shots to Everton's eleven, nine on target to five and fifty-seven per cent of the ball, and lost by two because they could not finish and Everton, for once, could. Five shots on target became three goals. The Echo's headline called it a superb night and the Chronicle's a meek surrender, which are the same ninety minutes from opposite ends, and it was Everton's first win of any kind since Ipswich on 19 September.

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Post-Match

Moyes took the press conference himself and gave the Grealish question the answer everyone in the room had already written down. "You probably know I am not going to give any details. It is a club decision and I support it." Asked whether he felt let down: "It is something I don't want to speak too much about." What he did want to speak about was everybody else. "The one thing about Everton is that they have got real good values, all the players stand behind it and accept the values, on the pitch and off the pitch. I think the players did a good job tonight, it is a small squad but we are doing our best to keep challenging." On the game, to the Echo: "We got the goals at good times, the third goal killed the game off but really pleased to get through, you can talk about cup games, the only thing that really matters is you want to get through." He had not mentioned Fleetwood to the players at all: "This was a big Premier League game really and trying to win any isn't easy. Anyone who beats Arsenal is doing a good job." Asked by the BBC whether Grealish would be back for Monday, he said he would not give any team news away, which is where the week began.

Hackney, on the club's own channel, was the one player who spoke. "I'm delighted with that. It was a special night." He thought it an important night against Premier League opposition after two defeats, and that the fans "were unbelievable". "It was a great ball from Barry, and I managed to put it in the corner. Hopefully there's many more to come." On his autumn: "I've had a bit of time on the bench. I kept working hard and hopefully I took my chance tonight." None of Garner, Barry, Tarkowski or Pickford was quoted on any page read overnight, which for a night with three scorers and a goalkeeper booked is a quiet mixed zone.

Jaissle, to the Chronicle, found the result "a little bit shocking because, overall, the game was not that bad", and then described the goals as a man describing a recurring dream. "It is the story of the season so far with a situation where it really counts, we are lacking in the clinical approach to solve the situations. Just think about the first one, this is again a low-risk zone where we said, clear the ball, nothing happens, and a couple of seconds later you can see the goal out of nothing." On the second: "In my point of view we deserve to have a penalty on the other hand, and then you miss that in the transition to defend their own box." To Sky he added the line his supporters will have read twice: "This is a learning process, but you don't get the time. We need to learn fast, especially with these young lads. Being a young team is not an excuse any more." Osula, he said, had twisted an ankle in Tarkowski's challenge and is a doubt for Monday.

Izzy Christiansen, on 5 Live, thought Everton "absolutely fantastic", with a zip to them from the first whistle, and that the performance had such authority and desire that Newcastle would want revenge on Monday and Everton would simply want to repeat it. Beesley's verdict in the Echo was headlined on Grealish and spent its best paragraph elsewhere: no Grealish, no problem, a crackling Hill Dickinson, a Prime Minister watching with glee, and Everton now ninety minutes from a first semi-final in eleven years, since Roberto Martinez's side lost to Manchester City. He also found room for the Milwaukee Brewers, who had won a first World Series in the small hours after fifty-six years; Everton, he noted, have been waiting longer than that for this particular cup. From their side, the Chronicle's Lee Ryder wrote of a meek surrender, of a tie as good as over at half-time, and of a travelling support that had mostly gone by the time the players came over to applaud it, "either made an early dart back to Tyneside or headed into Liverpool city centre for a night cap". The home game Jaissle promised ended with his own supporters leaving it early.

The Ratings

Marks from the Echo; the BBC readers' averages from the BBC's player rater, as they stood when this was written.

The Echo's Connor O'Neill gave four eights, to Tarkowski for a brilliant captain's performance, to Mykolenko for one of his best nights of the season, to Hackney, who "delivered the perfect message to his manager", and to Barry, who showed the composure he has been lacking in the last couple of weeks; Röhl and Dibling got the sixes, Röhl for being too often caught out of position. The BBC's readers made Hackney their player of the match, with Dewsbury-Hall and Garner next. The Chronicle's Lee Ryder gave nobody in black and white more than a six and Murphy a three, with Dedić "caught napping" in the corner for the first goal. Four eights and nobody below a five is the Echo's kindest sheet since August.

The Fans' Verdict

TPF posted 167 times in 40 threads between noon on Thursday and eight minutes past midnight, 99 of them between kick-off and the whistle, in the one-line threads the board uses instead of a match thread. The evening began with the team sheet and Grealish, moved through the first half-hour in its usual register, "our midfield is especially sleepy" at 20:04, a count of consecutive passes that did not reach four at 20:05, and at 20:10 the line that may outlast the night, that Dibling had done more in twenty minutes than Johnson in six games. Garner's goal was logged at 20:19 under a row of exclamation marks; Hackney's got two threads, one of them titled, with feeling, "Oh look, that Championship player", and the wish to watch him do it again at St James' Park on Monday. The half-time mood was the board's own: pleased, and checking the exits. A member watching Dewsbury-Hall called him a headless chicken and could not tell which position he was supposed to be playing, and was told he had been very good; another asked, at 20:58, whether Everton were going to get overly defensive, and was answered, "Wouldn't be the first time."

Barry's goal set off the night's one real row. The thread that greeted it was titled, with sarcasm thick enough to stand a spoon in, as a tribute to a clueless player scoring like that, aimed at a member who has spent the autumn saying so, and the member replied that most of his goals are gimmes and that those defending him know nothing about football, like Barry. "Who hurt you," said the first reply, and the defence that settled it, at 22:01, was practical: goals are goals, he is all Everton have got, and he had better be confident. The board's man of the match was Mykolenko, "our only player in the first 15 mins", with Tarkowski a close second, "the absolute rock of the defence". Hackney and Dibling were the night's vindication and the board said so in a dozen ways, the kindest being a wish at 20:35 that this meant they would start the next match too. Röhl divided it: a footballer but not a full-back, improving, cannot defend, doesn't half wander, a proper team player with very little ego, all of which are true. Joelinton was the villain, for the shoving in the goalmouth, which one member thought should have been a red card and another thought Tarkowski had managed beautifully, "shoving him and then letting the reaction play out".

On the manager, the board was quieter than it has been for a month, which is its way of saying well done. The honest verdict came at 22:29: Moyes got it right tonight, he tends to do this after bad results, and that is why he is still in the job. The follow-up, at 22:46, was that this should have been the side at Arsenal, and a thread at 22:58 was already asking what Everton would really lose by playing George and Dibling in the league, so the campaign has not been called off, merely satisfied for a Thursday. Of Grealish the board said, from the ground at 20:43, that Everton looked so much better with players who want the ball and that £25m had gone down the drain, and from elsewhere that it hoped he had no demons, which was kinder. Nobody mentioned the owners, tickets, trains or the price of a pint.

The stories were small and good. A member who got in from parent duties with the game under way found Everton two up and the board in mourning, and said so: the cryarses had him thinking they were losing, and it is hard enough being an Evertonian when they are. Another, abroad, admitted at 22:01 to considering flying back for, cough, the semi, and was told he fitted seamlessly into a board whose motto is that the glass is always half empty. In the afternoon's thread on where to drink near the ground, one member dared not go back to a bar he has visited three times and seen Everton lose 3–0 from on each occasion, which is the kind of superstition Evertonians claim not to have.

And on Their Board

The sample is thin again and the finding is the same as last week's, with the temperature changed. Newcastle's big boards are still shut to a reader without an account, Toontastic returned an error and Newcastle-Online a refusal, so this is Talk of the Tyne on Vital Football: eight posts in a thread called "Everton", from 20:33 to 21:39. "2-0 half time. Normal service resumes" was the first. At 21:16, with the third goal in, a member reckoned Newcastle had been taken to school by a bang average Everton side who are really not that great but are well drilled and all know their job, which from that end is a complaint and from this one a fair summary of the Moyes years. The same post gave the manager until Christmas. Another had never in his life seen a Newcastle team with less bottle, and a third thought Jaissle massively out of his depth and the hierarchy wrong to have appointed him. Murphy was the only player named, for his last league goal having come in February, and the sight of Steur coming on at 3–0 with nine minutes left drew a two-word reply that cannot be printed. Nothing on the journey, the night in Liverpool or the trip home; a board of eight posts does not have room for a story, and the seven thousand who were there told theirs by leaving early.

Beyond TPF

The Evertonians whose Bluesky posts are read for this section posted 444 times between kick-off and twenty-five to one, and it was the happiest the sample has been since it was first read. For a quarter of an hour it was the usual: no urgency, no out ball, a passive and soft team, and a request that Everton tear up Grealish's loan agreement. Then it was Hackney. The most-liked football post of the night called him a gem, excellent for Middlesbrough and better every time, the man who had helped create and score the first two goals and the one Everton have missed who can join all the dots; another compared him to Stuart McCall, or a hybrid of Peter Reid and Paul Bracewell, apologising for coming over all Louis Walsh. The other three things said most were Barry, seven in eleven and on course for twenty-eight by one post's arithmetic; Tarkowski standing up for his goalkeeper in the eighty-ninth minute, the reason Tarks is the captain; and VAR, or its absence: the match-going experience was elevated without it, one post found, and another could celebrate goals when they went in. On Moyes, where TPF was quiet, the sample was briefly generous: he got everything spot on, in set-up and attitude, said a post liked eighteen times, and the third goal would be lauded if a Sky Six club had scored it. The dissenters were on Pickford, whose night one post thought not far off his worst ninety minutes in an Everton shirt, against another who loved the way he gets under Newcastle's skin, and on Röhl, who plays right-back like a midfielder and should give way to Maitland-Niles on Monday.

The sample's evening had a death in it: the BBC reported during the first half that Sir Patrick Stewart had died, and the packs stopped to mourn him between the goals. The rest was texture. One was watching in New Zealand, telling the other kiwis to fire up their VPNs; one was raised in Fleetwood, has supported Everton all his life, and sees no conflict in December; one wished he were in the pubs by the ground, where the scene would be glorious and disgusting; one reached back, with the pleasure of a man opening an old file, to Hansen's hand at Wembley in 1984 as the debt this competition still owes Everton. And the one that caught the night best was posted at the whistle: Everton advance to the quarter-finals against Fleetwood Town, and that is as far as we go, with the hashtag that says Everton, aren't we.

Said most on Bluesky

Themes Carried Forward

A win, and the number that changes. The first victory of any kind since Ipswich on 19 September leaves the season at eleven played, five won, four drawn and two lost; the league count stays at two wins in fifteen, because this was not the league. Everton have never won the League Cup and have not reached its semi-final since 2016; they are now ninety minutes at Fleetwood from one, in the week of 14 December. Last week's board line was that Everton would beat Newcastle and lose to Fleetwood. The half that has happened is the half the board expected.

Grealish. "A breach of Club discipline", a training session not attended by the Echo's understanding, an unauthorised absence by the BBC's, and a manager who supports the club's decision and will not discuss it. The board wants him sent back and the sample wants the loan torn up, and both said so within an hour of a team sheet that showed Everton could win without him. Whether he is in the squad on Monday is the question, and Moyes has already said he will not answer it.

Hackney and Dibling, started. The board asked since September and the cup, for the third time, obliged: Hackney made the first goal and scored the second on his third start, was booked, taken off to an ovation and made the BBC readers' man of the match; Dibling got a six and struggled to get into the game, which is what a six means. The question is not whether they were good enough on Thursday but whether Thursday counts on Monday. Moyes picked the board's side after two defeats, and the board noticed that this is when he tends to.

Barry, and the finishing file. Seven goals in eleven games, every one of them started, the cross for Hackney's goal and a finish for his own that the Echo called confident and 5 Live called a training drill. The file opened at Ipswich with twenty-one shots and two on target; on Thursday it was eleven shots, five on target and three goals, and the man the board argues about made two of them. The argument will continue, because it is the board's favourite, but the scoreline has joined the other side.

Pickford, four weeks running, and this time the other way. Eight saves by the BBC's count, a palm to Schär's shot and a run out of his goal to shout at his own midfielder, a spilled cross recovered, a corner he could not punch, and a yellow card in the eighty-ninth minute for keeping hold of a ball that Burn wanted. The Echo gave him a seven and the sample split between wired and nearly his worst night. The file stays open, with a different sort of entry.

The right-back file, sixth entry, and the back four that held. Röhl again, a six from the Echo, too often caught out of position, with Maitland-Niles unused on the bench and the sample already picking him for Monday. Behind him the defence had its best night of the season: Tarkowski's tackle, Mykolenko's two blocks and an eight, O'Brien growing in confidence until Burn climbed above him at the end, and Branthwaite still in the protocol with no date. Twenty-eight shots against is not a defensive triumph. Eight of them saved and one going in is.

Moyes, and a barometer that moved. After two defeats the board was roughly three to one against him; after a cup win over the side that beat Everton 4–1 here in November it was mostly quiet, and the loudest post said he got it right and does this after bad results, which is why he is still in the job. The sample said he got everything spot on. The compromise a big club settles for had a good night, and it was the night he picked the side the supporters had been drawing for a month. The next test of whether he has noticed is a team sheet on Monday evening.

What was done to the supporters this week. Nothing new: a Thursday night fixed in September and left there, a streaming service for television, the replacement buses between Hunts Cross and Moorfields the preview warned about, and 7,732 Newcastle supporters who made the three-hour trip down for a home game and found it was not one. Then a Monday at eight o'clock on Tyneside for Sky, a Friday at eight o'clock against Coventry for the same reason, and, in the week of 14 December, a League Two ground on the Lancashire coast on a night to be announced.

The record. Eleven played, five won, four drawn, two lost, sixteen for and ten against; in the league, eleventh on ten points from eight, and nine away league games without a win since the 3–2 at St James' Park on 28 February. Newcastle have won two of their last six in all competitions and host Everton on Monday with Osula a doubt and Jaissle, by his own board's reckoning, given until Christmas.

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