Matchday Six · Hull City (a) · D 2–2 · 11 October 2026

Belloumi's 74th-minute strike denies Everton after Barry had put them ahead at Hull

Maitland-Niles gave away one goal and was beaten for the other, and Moyes could hardly find a player worth a pass mark.

Unashamedly written by a machine · The suffering is real

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Everton went ahead at Hull in the sixty-eighth minute, at a ground where nobody had scored this season, and still came home with a point, because both goals they conceded were made for them by Ainsley Maitland-Niles. His flick to the wrong man gave Joe Gelhardt the opener, and six minutes after Thierno Barry had put Everton in front he let his man past him too easily at the start of the move Mohamed Belloumi finished. In between, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, the forum's villain for three weeks after Ipswich, headed the equaliser from the right-back's cross and then got to the loose ball that sent Barry clear. David Moyes said he could hardly pick out a player he would give a pass mark, yet the point put Everton fifth, unbeaten after six league games for the first time since 2013–14.

The Week Before

The week was two days long, and the preview carried most of it. On Friday morning The Friedkin Group announced that they were exploring "the potential sale of a controlling interest" in the club they had owned for less than twenty-two months, and David Moyes found out when everyone else did. He took the press conference himself and did what he could with it. "It's a great club," he said, in the lines the BBC kept. "If anyone wants to speak to me then I will be the first person to let them know that it is certainly worth buying." On Manchester City, found guilty of breaking the league's financial rules and now appealing, he said what Evertonians had been saying all week, with a manager's licence: "I hope it's not just Everton who are getting picked on here. I think we get picked on by the referees and every other area as well." On Vitalii Mykolenko, the only left-back at the club since Adam Aznou was lent to Málaga in August, he said the player "has got a chance" and that "the extra day might help, we will see".

It did not help. At a quarter to one the team sheet arrived and Mykolenko was not on it, nor on the bench, and nobody has yet said what is wrong with him. The Echo's three writers had each offered Moyes a way round the hole that morning: Garner to left-back, or Garner to left-back with Hackney in the middle, or Garner to right-back with Maitland-Niles moved across and Nørgaard given a debut. Moyes took none of them. Michael Keane came in beside Tarkowski, Jarrad Branthwaite, who had come back from an England week with his hamstrings intact, went to left-back, and the midfield stayed as it was. Johnson kept the right, Grealish the left, Dewsbury-Hall the middle, and Tyler Dibling, who had scored for England's under-21s in the break, sat down for the second league game running with Tyrique George, Hayden Hackney, Charly Alcaraz and Christian Nørgaard beside him. TPF read the sheet as it reads most of them, with a sharp intake of breath: the thread on the line-up opened by hoping Branthwaite would not get injured running up and down the flank, the first reply recalled that he had the last time, and a third post, within six minutes, asked what could possibly go wrong. One member put the afternoon's priorities plainly: getting Branthwaite through ninety minutes mattered more than the result. The board's own answer, Garner at left-back and Hackney in the middle, was the Echo's too, and the manager had heard it from both and declined.

Hull's answers were the surprise. Mohamed Belloumi, who had played three times for Algeria in the break and scored twice, was on the bench, and his coach said afterwards that the player had come to him on Friday and told him he was fatigued. Joe Gelhardt, back at Hull for a third spell, took his place, and Tim Iroegbunam, ruled out by the local paper on Friday morning and passed fit by his coach on Friday afternoon, was among the substitutes against the club that sold him six weeks earlier. The ground was sold out. The fair beside it was shut, as it is every Sunday, and the day was mainly clear and about fourteen degrees at kick-off with a wind of six miles an hour, which is why Getty's photographers found the away end shielding its eyes.

The Match: Hull City 2–2 Everton

The first half was poor and Everton were the better side in it, which is the order those two things usually come in. Regan Slater fouled Barry outside the box in the opening minutes and Garner's dipping free kick had to be tipped over by Konstantinos Tzolakis. Semi Ajayi got across to stop Grealish in the box. Then Matt Crooks gave the ball away in his own half, chased it down late and was booked in the thirteenth minute, and Oli McBurnie followed him into the book eight minutes later for barging Tarkowski off the ball, in the Echo's account, or for clattering a captain who made the most of it, in Hull Live's. The two accounts of the same shove are the two ends of the ground in a sentence. Gelhardt ran at the Everton defence down Hull's right in the twenty-second minute and shot comfortably into Pickford's arms, the game's first effort on target. Barry rose for a corner and sent his header across goal and wide of the target. Crooks headed a Hull corner back across goal and Tarkowski, a couple of yards out, arched his head to clear it. TPF was already calling the whole midfield awful and noting that the ball kept holding up on the pitch.

In the thirty-fourth minute Everton scored, for about three minutes. Branthwaite, playing left-back, crossed from the left. Tzolakis came for it, felt he was impeded, and dropped it. Armstrong's shot was blocked by Nobel Mendy, and Ryan Giles, clearing from inside his own six-yard box, drilled the ball into Johnson, who was standing close by, and off him into the empty net. Johnson celebrated what would have been his first Premier League goal for Everton. Tim Wood, at Stockley Park, saw something, and Salisbury went to the monitor. The Premier League's own account of what he found was posted during the game: "Everton No.22 is in an offside position and challenges Hull No.3. Final decision is offside." Johnson had been offside when Armstrong shot, and when Giles tried to clear he was close enough to count as challenging him. Darren Cann, a former Premier League assistant referee, called it on 5 Live "an excellent and correct intervention" and a "subjective offside decision, rather a factual one", which is the phrase Moyes was still turning over three hours later. Hull's supporters celebrated the ruling out as they would a goal, and Getty has the picture to prove it. TPF's first response was to ask why, if he was offside, it had needed a review at all, because the technology decides, and the answer came within a minute: because it is Everton, silly. The board's own rules-reader had a fairer go at it later and concluded, unhappily, that the officials had got it right. Johnson is now the player who stood offside for the disallowed goal against Ipswich and the player who was offside for his own at Hull, and the law has reached the point where the people it is applied to have it read to them afterwards.

Hull's best five minutes followed. McBurnie laid the ball off and Gelhardt curled a left-footed shot that a touch from Tarkowski turned inches wide; Sky logged it as off the line. From the corner Mendy was six yards out with the goal gaping and headed over. Then, in the second of four added minutes, Grealish beat Lewie Coyle for once and stood a cross up to the far post, and Barry, waiting under it, headed over the bar. It was the second of the chances Hull Live would later count against him and the first that mattered. It was 0–0 at half-time, and Moyes said afterwards that he and his staff had been "annoyed with the players at half-time with the way they had played in the first half".

Hull scored within three minutes of the restart, and Everton made every part of it. Moments before, Branthwaite had attempted a backheel on the touchline that rolled out of play, and the home end gave him the ironic cheer that away full-backs are given. Then McBurnie, in his own half, skipped past two challenges, one of them a nutmeg on Branthwaite, and hit a hopeful diagonal towards the Everton box. It should have been Maitland-Niles's to deal with. He got to it and flicked it, straight to Sorba Thomas, who had Gelhardt running inside him and gave him the ball. Pickford came out. Gelhardt waited to see what he would do, and then, in his own words to the BBC, "decided to go with that chip", and it went over the goalkeeper and bounced slowly in while, in Hull Live's words, the stadium held its breath. Gelhardt was born on Merseyside, supported Liverpool as a boy and had a trial at Everton at nine or ten, and had told Hull Live on the morning of the game that he had Evertonian family and friends, one of whom would be in the away end: "My mate's going to the game in the away end with the Everton fans." It was his first Premier League goal since March 2022, when he was a Leeds player, so the mate had come a long way to watch it. On TPF the goal was greeted in the manner of a board that has seen this before: a shambles, a gift, and a line about what a few million pounds buys you at right-back.

Everton were level inside seven minutes. Grealish found Armstrong and his shot went straight at Tzolakis; Barry headed a cross straight at him too. Then Maitland-Niles, the right-back, turned up on the inside left, which is where Everton's attacking had been all afternoon, and put a cross to the back post. Dewsbury-Hall, Everton's smallest player, had ghosted off Mendy and headed it in, unmarked, in the fifty-fifth minute. It was the first goal Hull had conceded at home all season and Dewsbury-Hall's second league goal of this one; his first, against Crystal Palace in August, was Everton's first of the campaign. He had spent the three weeks since Ipswich as TPF's whipping boy for a blind back-pass and a free header wide, and the board's response to the equaliser was two words, "KDH yes", and then, within two minutes, a reply pointing out the assist and calling it atonement. The Echo's Chris Beesley had already noted, before any of this, that Dewsbury-Hall had been winning timely free kicks all afternoon and was the one clever thing about Everton's first half.

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What followed for a quarter of an hour was the afternoon in miniature: Everton on top, Barry under the ball. Grealish picked out Branthwaite on the overlap down the left, and Branthwaite put the ball across the six-yard box for Barry, three yards out, who got his legs in a tangle and let it run between them. Sky's key moments logged it as a sitter missed in the sixtieth minute; Hull Live, two minutes earlier, had him having a nightmare; Pat Nevin on 5 Live called it a dreadful mess. TPF proposed buying a traffic cone and giving it the number eleven, and one member observed that Stuart Barlow would not have missed it, which is the board's way of saying a great deal in a few words. Jakirović, sensing a side lacking energy, made three changes in the sixty-fourth minute: Elliot Stroud for Giles, Belloumi for Gelhardt, and Iroegbunam for Crooks. Hull Live's ratings recorded the third of them as on early in the second half against his former club and no outlet recorded what the away end made of him, which is probably the answer. Around the same minute the home supporters paid their respects to Richard Eglen, who had recently died. Moyes sent George on for Johnson two minutes later.

Then Barry scored, and it was the coolest thing anyone in an Everton shirt did all day. Thomas, on the halfway line, took a free kick lazily and underhit it towards Ajayi. Dewsbury-Hall read it, got there first and hurt himself doing so, and the ball ran on for Barry, one against one with Tzolakis, who did not hurry and did not miss. It was the sixty-eighth minute and his sixth goal of the season. Beesley called him the coolest man inside the MKM Stadium, which, given the previous twenty minutes, was a considered choice of words. TPF's reaction was seven threads at once, two of them about barn doors, and a fifth-placed-as-it-stands post that drew the reply "Not now" inside a minute. Dewsbury-Hall was still receiving treatment off the pitch as the game restarted.

Six minutes later Hull were level, and the board that had said "Not now" had been right. Stroud, ten minutes after coming on, held off one Everton player and then another on the right of the box, got to the byline and played the ball inside to Belloumi. Belloumi shaped to shoot first time, tapped it past Dewsbury-Hall instead, got away from Garner and hit it low and left-footed; Pickford got a hand to it and it went in off his wrist and the underside of the bar, in the seventy-fourth minute. Maitland-Niles had let his man go by him too easily at the start of the move, and the Echo's blog said so at once. The forum did not need telling. Within a minute it was calling for the right-back's head, within four Moyes had taken him off, and within five the board had him down as a future pub-quiz curiosity, with Jake O'Brien and Hackney coming on for him and Armstrong in the seventy-eighth minute. Hull's supporters, who have a long memory for the Championship, greeted Hackney with a reminder of Middlesbrough's defeat in the play-off final.

Everton pressed for a winner and did not look like getting one. Hackney nearly found Barry with a diagonal pass that was a touch overhit. Belloumi, now looking the best player on the pitch, set up McBurnie for a shot that was blocked, and Thomas overhit a cross to him at the back post. Hidemasa Morita came on for Hull and calmed things on the edge of his own box when Everton pressed. In the eighty-sixth minute Dibling and Alcaraz replaced Grealish and Barry, and Robinio Vaz replaced Thomas. Alcaraz dragged a shot well wide from distance in the first of five added minutes, and that was the last thing of note. The BBC's blog said nobody could really argue with the share of the points, and it was right.

Post-Match

Moyes went through three interviews and did not soften between them. To BBC Match of the Day: "I'm really frustrated with the levels generally. Our level was way below where we've been recently. Disappointed that when we went 2-1 up I didn't think there'd be any way we would go on to not to win the game. But a couple of defensive mistakes didn't help and we also missed quite a lot of chances ourselves which would've made it easier." He gave Hull their due in the same breath: "coming away with a point from here you shouldn't be too disappointed when you look at the results they got against Manchester United and Aston Villa here. They've got something going." To Sky he was blunter about his own players: "There were not many performing at the level I think they have been or can perform at. I could hardly pick a player out who I could give a pass mark." And: "When we went 2-1 up, I didn't think they could come back. We were so comfortable and didn't look like we should be conceding. A couple of defensive lapses were really poor. Everybody needs to step their game up."

In the press conference, as the Echo's Chris Beesley transcribed it, he came to the disallowed goal with the law's own vocabulary in his hand. "Yeah, subjective offside, I think is the word. Which I don't know what that actually means. But I'm trying to be pretty straight as much as I can. You know, we had a goal rolled off last week again against Ipswich the last time we played. He may well just be offside, Brennan. But I'd like to see the lines drawn just to see exactly if they've got it right." He wondered whether "the goalkeeper's heel could be playing him onside", allowed that "on just a quick picture I saw, 10 minutes ago, my feeling is it's probably just offside", and then delivered the line of the day: "I don't know what subjective offside is, and I don't think any of you do either." Asked whether the week's news had told on his players, he closed that door: "I'm not giving the players any room for excuses because of what's going on, whether that be the transfer window or that be ownership." Asked whether Dewsbury-Hall was at least a positive, he said it was, "because, generally, the overall performance from everybody was so far below our levels", and that Kiernan "was the one who got us the goal, and obviously he made the assist for Thierno".

Sergej Jakirović thought it fair. "I saw a good game, tough game," he told the BBC. "First half maybe we were scrappy on the ball with our transitions but we had what we had. Second ball when they made mistakes, we punished them immediately. But unfortunately after this we gave them two goals. It's big cardinal mistakes. But I can be happy with the boys because we showed good mentality. A point is good." On Belloumi: "On Friday he came to me he was fatigued and there was a lot of travelling. He's also a very young guy and in the past he has had a few injuries. But he's a great player and he can make the difference." To Sky he called it a "crazy second half" and said of Everton: "It's difficult to beat them. They have high tactical discipline and are strong in challenges, especially the centre-backs." To Hull Live: "In the end, I think it's a fair result."

Gelhardt, who learned on Saturday that he was starting, told the BBC he "was buzzing and couldn't wait to get playing", and that it was "an amazing moment. I've waited a long time to play back in the Premier League since I was at Leeds so to do that and score was an unbelievable feeling." Dewsbury-Hall talked about Barry, in words the Echo's blog carried: "We have a love-hate relationship because I expect so much of him and sometimes I probably annoy him. But he's come back and he's got really hungry and he's improving every game. I like the fact he said he should have scored three. He's scored today, he's helped us get a point, but I know for a fact he'll continue to work." Grealish, substituted after a quiet afternoon in Coyle's pocket, posted to the away end from his phone, as Goodison News reported: "Gutted we couldn't take all three points. But the unbeaten run continues. Thanks for the top away support as usual." Pat Nevin, on 5 Live, saw "a very good second half" and "certainly no lack of effort", but for Moyes "that one last mistake" would be the thing: "Without that, I think Everton could have cruised to the end with three points."

Beesley's ratings gave Dewsbury-Hall the only 8, for "a clever display from the start" and "a delightfully taken header". Tarkowski, Keane, Garner, Grealish and Barry got 7s, Barry's for being "the coolest man inside the MKM Stadium" after missing a chance "which the striker somehow missed". Pickford, Maitland-Niles ("villain turned hero"), Branthwaite ("Where to start? It was eventful"), Armstrong and Johnson got 6s, Johnson's noting that "lightning struck twice" on the offside. Keane's 7 came with a sentence that said what everyone thought: "ultimately you want Branthwaite in that area." The BBC's readers had Dewsbury-Hall first on 7.87, Tarkowski 6.92 and Grealish 6.78, and Maitland-Niles last of every player on the pitch on 5.44. Sky's co-commentator Don Goodman gave his man of the match to Dewsbury-Hall for a goal, an assist and the most chances created. Hull Live gave Belloumi 8 and Gelhardt 7.5, Coyle 7 for having "dealt with" Grealish "without too much fuss for the most part", Thomas 6.5 for a "superb through ball" and a "really poor, casual free-kick", and Iroegbunam 6.

Beesley's verdict was the week's two stories in one column. Everton had shown "exactly why loyal but long-suffering Blues supporters felt let down by their owners in the transfer market this summer": the right-back signed on deadline day had given away one goal and been questioned on the other, and the team's best player had spent the afternoon at left-back because the club had lent out its second one. He called the Friedkins "absentee landlords from Texas" and ended with the line of the day's other half: "Such are the ups and downs of being an Evertonian as those of us who have watched the team up and down the country for many years all know. It's a shame that Dan Friedkin has never experienced such emotions though." On the offside he was drier. "We keep getting told that the officials are getting these calls right and should be applauded but it seems curious that the Blues have somehow become the test case to educate us all about all the various interpretations of the contemporary laws of the game on an almost weekly basis."

The Fans' Verdict

TPF does not keep a match thread. It keeps a hundred, one line each, and reading them in order on Sunday afternoon was like reading a heart monitor. Before kick-off the board had braced itself: Branthwaite out of position, Keane and Tarkowski together again, which one member likened to a punishment under the spending rules, Johnson ahead of George and Dibling, Hackney left out to make the arithmetic work. "What could possibly go wrong" was the question at 12:52 and the answer arrived at 15:10. The first half had been judged dire, slow and one-dimensional, with everything going through Grealish and the right side a rumour, and the disallowed goal had produced the usual hour of law-reading. Then came Gelhardt's goal and the board's verdict on the right-back was instant and unkind; then Dewsbury-Hall's header and the word "atonement", used twice in five minutes, once for him and once for the man who crossed it; then Barry's misses and a proposal to buy a traffic cone and give it the number eleven; then Barry's goal and a joke about who had left the barn door open; then "4th as it stands" and, a minute later, "Not now"; then Belloumi, and a board that had known all along. Stuart Barlow's name was invoked. And not one post mentioned Iroegbunam, who came on against his old club and went unnoticed by the people who had spent August on his hamstring.

The verdict afterwards split along a line the board knows well. One camp counted two points dropped, a lack of a clinical striker, a lack of a right-back, and a what-if; the other said a draw away at a promoted side with the two first-choice centre-halves split up, the best player at left-back and Johnson on the right could have been a disaster and was not, and that Everton had enjoyed more of the ball than in any game anyone could remember. The man who opened a thread calling it a great result all things considered was told, in the board's register, exactly where to go, and the argument ran for an hour. The Moyes argument, which had gone quiet for a month, came back: one member asked at what point people would realise the manager psychologically does not want to succeed, and the replies, which ran until half past seven, mostly took the manager's side. The defenders' case was that the team he picked did enough to win, that the right-back he was given cost two goals and the only striker he owns missed a contender for miss of the season, and that nobody could name a replacement without naming a man the board had laughed at. It was an argument, not a mutiny, and the board's honest position by evening was the one it has held since August: still unbeaten, fifth, two wins from six, and sure that the January it needs is not the January it will get. "It's Everton," wrote one, "and we don't do things like that."

The villain was Maitland-Niles by a distance, and the board's view of him by evening was the fair one: a right-back of twenty-nine who is what he is, lovely going forward, prone to a flick near his own box, and the club's for want of anything better. The forum's most thoughtful post on him said it would stick with him until a better one is signed, and that this is why he cost what he cost. Dewsbury-Hall was forgiven in a single header, and a thread that had set out to abuse him before the game ended by praising his movement. Dibling, for his four minutes, got the loudest solo praise on the board, and a member observed that he looks a different player this year. Johnson divided it: a quiet first half, an improvement in the second, and a standing question about why the ball goes left when he is on the right. Nobody blamed Branthwaite for a goal, which given the morning's fears was its own result, and the thread announcing that he was limping in the twentieth minute was corrected by one reader saying he just walks like that. The one Everton player nobody mentioned at all was Nørgaard, who sat on a bench for ninety minutes without a competitive minute to his name, which is now a season-long storyline nobody is telling.

TPF's stories this week were about watching, not going. The board shares its streams, with the self-mockery of a thread titled for those too cheap for Sky, and one member had a link ready four minutes before kick-off and was thanked for it. A father posted at one minute past two that his son had just pointed out that nine of the eleven were English, which is the kind of thing a child notices while a parent is trying to watch. And after the Anfield game the board discovered, by way of a partner who had put the accessibility commentary on by mistake, that a single commentator with no stupid second and third opinions and no irrelevant statistics was a great improvement, and spent the evening working out how to switch it on from the remote. In the week the club was put up for sale, this is what counted as good news.

And on Their Board

Hull's supporters, on the Hull City board at not606, had a match thread that opened three weeks early and reached thirty-one pages, and they took the afternoon in three stages: fear, fury at their own, and pride. Before kick-off they wanted a tight start after conceding three in the first seven minutes of their last two games, did not like the look of their team, and counted nine Championship players in it. The first half had them calling Crooks a red card waiting to happen and Everton nothing special in the same breath, and when Johnson's goal went in there was a striking honesty: if that had been ruled out for them they would have been livid, and they had got away with one. Then Gelhardt scored and the board ate its own words inside a minute, having called him useless at 15:11 and brilliant at 15:12. Belloumi's goal produced "Hulloumi back in the game" and the observation that Pickford's arms were made of Weetabix. The settled verdict was pride, fight and a fair result, with a minority who thought they had deserved to win and a cooler voice who thought it was the first time Hull had looked a bit out of their depth and hanging on. Their man of the match poll split four ways, Ajayi, Coyle, Slater and Thomas, with the note that Thomas would have won it but for the free kick that gave Everton their second. Their villain was Crooks, by the same distance TPF's was Maitland-Niles. The referee was theirs too: the worst they had seen since coming back up, by several accounts, and one post complained that Everton had been allowed to shove at every set piece and had been "smarter than us in that sense".

About Everton they were respectful and a little dismissive at once, which is a hard trick. "A truly professional hardened Premier League outfit", wrote one, counting England internationals; "the worst team we've played in the prem so far", wrote another, after reading an Everton board and reporting that all it did was moan, which is a fair review of TPF on a Sunday. Dewsbury-Hall won them over: one did not realise what a fantastic footballer he is and said he ran the second half. Coyle was credited with keeping Grealish in his pocket, a reading Hull Live shared and one dissenter did not. The away end, by their account, was quieter than usual until the second goal, and one member explained why: the stand announcer had played something quick and very loud over the public address whenever the visitors tried to start a song. Keane was noticed twice, once as the twin brother of an old Hull player and once for puffing out his cheeks as Belloumi went past him late on. Branthwaite's tumble under Gelhardt was replayed on their board with some glee. Nobody on it mentioned Gelhardt's mate in the Everton end.

Their stories were the better kind, as they were before the game. One supporter queued for the whole of half-time for a pint of Guinness and did not get served before the teams came out, and thought the crowd a bit subdued, which may be connected. Another was up at two in the morning in a time zone he did not name. A third asked why the concourse had been at a standstill for fifteen minutes after the whistle and was told that the club had announced at half-time a new system for the footbridge to the station, which had come to a standstill at the last home game; the reply, at one minute past eight, was that they had simply moved the standstill somewhere else. And a man who had put a bet on Hull to finish in the top half in July, at fifty to one, reported that the odds were now nine to one, and that he had better get his bet on for the win because the coach knew what he was doing. He was half right, which at fifty to one is good going.

Themes Carried Forward

Finishing is still the whole problem, and now it has a face. Sky counted eight big chances for Everton and five of them for Barry, who scored one. The three he missed were two headers from inside the six-yard box and a tap-in that went between his legs, and Hull Live's correspondent was counting them in real time. Then he scored the one that mattered with the calm of a man who had missed nothing, and Dewsbury-Hall said afterwards that he had told the dressing room he should have scored three. The board's response has moved on from calling for his head to buying him a traffic cone, which is progress of a sort. Six goals in eight games is a return most strikers would take. The misses are the reason Everton have drawn four of six, and Moyes said as much.

The right-back file is open again. Maitland-Niles made Gelhardt's goal with a flick to the wrong man and was beaten too easily at the start of Belloumi's, and between those two moments crossed for the equaliser. The BBC's readers put him last of twenty-seven players. He was signed on deadline day because the club's first, second and third choices fell through, and Beesley's verdict connected the dots to the owners without needing a ruler. Jake O'Brien came on to replace him with twelve minutes left, and the board's expectation is that O'Brien, a centre-half, has the position for a while, which is how the last two right-back questions were also answered. Röhl, fit again, sat on the bench. The honest position, the forum's and probably the manager's, is that Maitland-Niles stays until someone better is bought, and the next window has a sale running through it.

Left-back without a left-back. Branthwaite got through ninety minutes, which was the only thing TPF asked for at a quarter to one, and his afternoon was a rollercoaster in Beesley's word and in the record: a cross that led to a goal that was not given, an ironic cheer for a backheel, a nutmeg by McBurnie in the build-up to Hull's first, a perfect low cross that Barry could not finish, and no part in either goal that counted. Nobody has said what is wrong with Mykolenko. If he is out again on Saturday the question returns, and the answer the manager chose this time was the one both the Echo and the board had argued against.

Dewsbury-Hall, redeemed in a header. Three weeks ago he was the forum's villain and hostage, for a blind back-pass and a free header missed. On Sunday he won free kicks all afternoon, headed the equaliser unmarked, read Thomas's free kick before anyone else, got hurt making the pass that put Barry in, and was the only Everton player Moyes would name as a positive. The Echo's 8, the BBC readers' 7.87 and Sky's man of the match agree. Hull's board, which had never thought about him, thought he ran the second half. He has two league goals this season and the first, against Crystal Palace in August, was Everton's first of the campaign; the board that wanted him off at Ipswich wanted more of him by Sunday evening.

VAR's file thickens, and Johnson is in it twice. Against Ipswich he was the man standing offside in front of the goalkeeper when Barry's header was taken away. At Hull he was the man standing offside when Armstrong shot, and the man close enough to Giles when Giles cleared to be "challenging an opponent for the ball". The second was explained as correct by a former official on the day, and Moyes's complaint was not that either was wrong but that he does not know what "subjective offside" means and does not believe anyone in the room did either. Beesley's version is that Everton have become the test case for every interpretation of the law in turn. The lines had not been shown by Sunday night; Moyes wants to see them.

Moyes, argued over, not out. The board's temperature after a draw it felt it should have won was an argument that ran from four o'clock to half past seven, and his critics' case was psychological rather than tactical: that he does not want to succeed, that the selection was shocking, that he blames the owners and says he is an Evertonian. His defenders' case was the one he made himself: the team he picked did enough to win, two individual errors and a striker's misses cost it, and nobody can name who else he was supposed to pick at right-back. He said he could hardly give a pass mark to anyone, and offered no excuse about the window or the owners. He is unbeaten after six league games for the first time since 2013–14, when Martínez's side finished fifth with the club's best points total in twenty-seven years; he is fifth now, in the last year of his contract and working for owners who would like to sell. The sensible choice a big club settled for has the table on his side and the forum half on it, which is roughly where he started the season.

The youth spine, and a bench that is finally one. Armstrong started his sixth league game of six, was praised on the board for one pass and questioned for the first time by a member who could not see what everyone else sees, and came off at seventy-eight to be replaced by Hackney, whom the Hull crowd mocked for a play-off final and who nearly put Barry in with his first touch. George came on in the sixty-sixth minute, had spells on either flank and did not sparkle, in the Echo's phrase, and the board split on whether he should start. Dibling got the last four minutes and the five added, and the board's loudest praise for them. There is still no word of a contract for Armstrong, and the board has decided for itself that this is why he starts every week. One member counted the bench before kick-off and found it the strongest in years; the manager used five of it, and among the four he did not use were Nørgaard, still without a competitive minute, and Röhl, back among the substitutes after his injury.

Grealish, quiet, and honest about it. Seventy-nine minutes against Ipswich to an ovation; eighty-six here in Coyle's pocket, by Hull Live's reading and their board's, with one shot straight at Tzolakis and the cross Barry headed over. He wrote to the away end that he was gutted and thanked them. The board barely mentioned him, which for Grealish is itself a finding; its complaint was that everything went through him, not that he did badly with it. He has not scored this season. The preview noted that his only two Everton goals came in Salisbury's games, and the file can be closed.

The owners, and a manager who will not use them. Forty-eight hours after The Friedkin Group said they would sell, their team went to Hull and the manager was asked whether that had told on the players. "I'm not giving the players any room for excuses because of what's going on, whether that be the transfer window or that be ownership." Beesley called them absentee landlords and said it was a shame Dan Friedkin had never felt the ups and downs of an afternoon like this one. The board raised the sale only in passing, and sourly, when the right-back erred: the best owners in thirty years, one wrote, cutting budgets. Names went round the fan sites over the weekend, none of them yet attached to anything a named outlet has reported; the preview's figures, about £800m including about £380m of debt, remain what the Guardian understands and the Echo believes, and nothing more.

What was done to the supporters this week. Nothing new since the preview. The game was moved off the Saturday for Hull Fair and put on Sky, the fair was shut, the strike was off and the train went via Brighouse, and the away end arrived on time and sang quietly until the second goal, if Hull's supporters are to be believed, because the public address was turned up whenever it started. The attendance is given two ways, 24,258 on Everton's season page and 24,458 everywhere else, and the ground was sold out either way. The next thing done to the supporters is a half past twelve kick-off on Saturday.

The record. Six played, two won, four drawn, none lost, eight scored and five conceded, ten points, fifth. The round's other Sunday games fell Everton's way: Palace beat Forest and Liverpool lost 3–0 at home to Manchester City, so the neighbours are ninth on nine and Everton are above both Chelsea and Liverpool. Brentford, fourth, have the same ten points and a better goal difference; the BBC's line was that Everton are outside a Champions League place on goal difference alone, which is a sentence that will not be repeated here for fear of what usually follows it. Hull are eighth on nine, with the first home goals they have conceded on their record. The season preview had Everton eleventh. Away from home in the league Everton have now gone eight games without a win, the last at Newcastle on 28 February, and it would have been the thirteenth away win of Moyes's second spell. Everton have avoided defeat in their first six league games for the first time since 2013–14.

Elsewhere

Manchester City played their first game since the verdict and won 3–0 at Anfield, where, in the BBC's words, Liverpool fans made their feelings known before and during the game with constant "cheat" jibes, but City, who have appealed against the verdict of an independent commission, responded with a measured display. TPF had polled itself on Saturday night about which of the two it wanted to win and had found no takers for the neighbours; it got the result it voted for and took no visible pleasure in it, beyond one member's message from a friend asking the score in a derby he had renamed. The sanction has still not been announced, and the appeal is with a separate board.

The politics reached the game on Sunday evening. The BBC reported that the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, who is an Everton supporter, would release details of his meetings with senior figures at Manchester City after the leader of the opposition demanded them, and that some Premier League clubs were so "astonished" by Burnham's stance that sources told BBC Sport they were "concerned" about political interference in the appeal process. "I've been asked by the leader of the opposition to publish details of my meetings, which I'm happy to do and I'm going to," he said, adding that he had only one significant meeting with the club, in 2021, as mayor of Greater Manchester. Everton's own deductions, ten points cut to six and then two more, went from charge to final answer inside a single season, and nobody asked to see anyone's diary.

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