Everton drew 1-1 with Wolverhampton Wanderers at the Hill Dickinson Stadium on Wednesday night, and somehow the scoreline felt both fair and faintly absurd. Fair because it was a low-chance game for long stretches, all scrappy rhythm and set-piece shrapnel. Absurd because the last ten minutes looked like someone had tipped the whole match upside down and shaken it until the cards fell out.
Michael Keane put Everton ahead early, Wolves levelled through the teenage spark of Mateus Mané, then Keane was sent off for a hair-pull incident late on before Jack Grealish followed him down the tunnel for dissent. Everton finished with nine men, Wolves finished with a point, and both teams finished with plenty to chew on.
For Everton, there’s an awkward truth hiding in the chaos: Keane’s three-match ban may not be a bad thing.
That sounds harsh on a player who has given the club honest service, contributed goals, and has been part of a defence that has had to fight through a season of reshuffles. Keane has done well. James Tarkowski has done well. But the pairing together is a problem, and it’s a problem opponents know exactly how to poke.
Keane and Tarkowski, together, are simply too slow across the ground for the modern Premier League. Not in bravery, not in willingness, not in leadership. In speed, in turning, in recovering into the space behind them when the game stretches. When they are paired, teams don’t even need to be subtle. They just need one runner with timing, one pass with courage, and suddenly Everton’s centre is spinning like a compass near a magnet.
The irony is that this match began in a way that suited Everton. They looked organised, competitive, and purposeful without it being pretty. The first half was described in many quarters as low quality, and that’s not an insult so much as an accurate weather report. Everton controlled it without creating a storm. Wolves carried little threat for long spells. The ball was in the air, in the channels, into tackles, out of tackles, into second balls. It was football by blunt instrument.
Everton’s opener came from a familiar Moyes platform: structure, set-piece delivery, and a reaction that was sharper than the opponent’s. Dwight McNeil swung in a free-kick from the left, the clearance fell kindly, and Keane finished instinctively, striker-like, to make it 1-0. He nearly added a second not long after, thumping a header against the post from another dead-ball situation. In a match where chances were rationed like wartime sugar, that moment felt enormous.
But games don’t stay in the shape you want forever, and Wolves had a second-half response that deserves real credit. This is the key point if you’re posting to both the Northern and Midlands Gazette: Wolves are improving, and not just in vague “better attitude” language. There were tangible patches where they moved the ball quicker, pressed with more conviction, and started to play through Everton rather than simply around them.
Rob Edwards’ tweaks mattered. The introduction of André at half-time gave Wolves more composure and bite in the middle. Later, when Ladislav Krejci went off injured, Edwards made a bold call by introducing Jørgen Strand Larsen, sacrificing defensive flexibility for a more direct threat. It paid off almost immediately.
Wolves’ equaliser on 69 minutes was the clearest snapshot of the problem Everton must solve. Strand Larsen dropped into space, received, turned, and threaded Mané through. The 18-year-old accelerated and finished cleanly into the corner. It was a goal built on two things Everton cannot allow: time for the passer, and room to run at the centre-backs. Once Wolves started to find those moments, Everton’s defensive partnership looked heavy-legged. That’s not a moral judgement. It’s physics.
From that point, Wolves grew into the match. They ended with more of the ball, more corners, and more shots on target. They had spells where Everton looked like a side trying to hold its breath underwater, just waiting for the surface. João Gomes forced Pickford into a smart save from the left side of the box. Arokodare had headed chances that drifted wide. Mané had efforts blocked as Wolves crowded Everton’s box and began to believe that the bottom club could finally look like a Premier League team for more than ten minutes at a time.
Then came the madness.
Keane’s red card, for pulling Tolu Arokodare’s hair in an aerial duel, was the sort of incident that will be debated for weeks because it sits in that murky space between law and reality. Everton’s camp felt it was harsh. Wolves weren’t complaining. The referee upgraded the punishment after a review, and suddenly Everton were down to ten with a lead already gone and the game tilting hard.
Grealish’s dismissal was different. That was pure loss of control, the kind of emotional splash that leaves a manager furious because it’s avoidable. A first yellow, then a second for sarcastic applause, and Everton were down to nine for a long chunk of added time. Wolves threw on pressure, pumped in crosses, won corners, and still couldn’t find the winner. Pickford produced a magnificent late save from a Hugo Bueno strike that was heading towards the top corner. Arokodare flashed a header wide in stoppage time. Wolves pushed and pushed and pushed, but the net didn’t move.
The numbers tell the story of the match’s strange balance. Everton had 13 shots but only 2 on target. Wolves had 12 shots with 4 on target, and forced far more set-piece situations with 7 corners to Everton’s 2. Possession leaned Wolves’ way too, especially as the second half wore on and Everton’s legs shortened.
Now, here’s where Everton’s bigger picture comes in, and it matters because this is not a team with a settled XI or even a settled bench.
Everton are stretched. Seamus Coleman is out. Jarrad Branthwaite is out. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall is out. Carlos Alcaraz is out. Idrissa Gueye and Iliman Ndiaye are away on international duty. That’s not just depth, that’s spine. That’s leadership, athleticism, ball-carrying, goals, and the kind of options that let a manager change a game rather than simply survive it.
So when people point at Keane and Tarkowski as a pairing and say it can’t continue, it’s important to acknowledge the reality Moyes is working in. Sometimes you don’t pick the perfect combination, you pick the combination that exists.
But transition means change, and this is where Moyes has to be both praised and challenged.
We love what he’s doing. Moyes has restored competitiveness and made Everton difficult to play against. He has given the team a clear identity, and you can see it in their organisation, their set-piece threat, their willingness to fight for every inch. That is not small work. That is foundational work.
Yet if we’re being honest, we would be wrong not to say what we can all see: Tarkowski and Keane should not be paired together, not if Everton want to play on the front foot, not if they want to hold a higher line, and not if they want to stop teams from treating the space behind them like open countryside.
The uncomfortable twist is that Keane’s ban may force the change Everton need. Not because Keane is the villain, but because the pairing is the problem. A reshuffle could mean Jake O’Brien taking a more central role alongside Tarkowski, with Everton choosing mobility and recovery pace over familiarity. When Branthwaite returns, it becomes even clearer. Everton need at least one centre-back who can eat up ground quickly when the game breaks into a sprint.
This isn’t about disrespecting players who’ve served the club. It’s about understanding where Everton are. They’re in transition. Transition isn’t a slogan you print on a scarf. It’s the uncomfortable middle bit where you make decisions that feel slightly ruthless but are actually necessary.
Wolves, meanwhile, will leave Merseyside encouraged. They are still anchored to the bottom, but there is a pulse now. Five points from three games and an 18-year-old scoring in back-to-back matches changes the mood around a club. Edwards’ substitutions changed the game. Mané changed the temperature. And in the final stages, Wolves looked like a side starting to remember that survival fights are not won by hope alone, but by momentum and belief.
Everton’s challenge is different. They have steadied the ship under Moyes, but now they must decide what kind of ship they want to be. A hard-to-beat vessel that never leaves the harbour, or one that risks open water and upgrades its engine.
Keane’s ban is unfortunate. It’s also a chance. The kind of chance you don’t ask for, but you’d be foolish not to use.
