Everton can learn from what Brentford players did - they are sleepwalking into a crisis

Everton are in danger of sleepwalking into a crisis.

After a difficult start to the season expectations quickly lowered to staying out of trouble. Everyone can see there is a real chance of a brighter future. The stunning new waterfront stadium the Blues will call home next year is tangible proof of that. The prospective takeover by The Friedkin Group offers hope the stability needed to push for success might come even sooner.

But they still need to get there. And they are making a mess of it. Sometimes attack is the best form of defence. A club that can do little but tread water as it attempts to navigate the final part of an exhausting journey through the chaos of recent years could do well to learn from the Brentford team that came to Goodison without a point on the road and ended this match celebrating an unlikely draw after an hour spent with 10 men.

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The biggest moment in this game was not the red card for Christian Norgaard, handed out late in the first half after his lunge towards the ball instead ended in a nasty collision with Jordan Pickford. It was midway through the second half. After Everton had started how they had finished the opening 45 minutes - hemming Brentford into their own box - the away side launched a counter attack. Keane Lewis-Potter charged towards the Blues box, cut inside from the left and shot straight at Pickford. He did not score. But he did change the rest of the match.

The move offered Brentford confidence. Minutes later Pickford gathered a cross flashed across his goalmouth and was left screaming at his teammates as he instinctively sought to launch a counter attack but saw Royal Blue shirts surrounding him and Dominic Calvert-Lewin on the halfway line, isolated and outnumbered.

In one attack Lewis-Potter had punctured Everton’s spirit, the warning sign putting a lid on their ambition. For the rest of the game it was difficult to tell which side had the extra man. Everton, who started this match well, were the better side for most of it and initially stepped up the pressure when they had the extra man, lost structure. They looked caught between protecting what they had and fighting for something more. The addition of Beto, minutes after his introduction was called for by the Gwladys Street, did not improve things. Iliman Ndiaye, who had shown promise when he was moved into the central role Dyche, just days ago, questioned whether he could play, was moved back out wide and while Beto repeatedly found the ball in good areas, Everton lacked cohesion to their attacks. It became haphazard and that suited Brentford.

Drawing conclusions from this game is not easy and this is certainly not a time to act in panic. Until the red card there were clear positives from what Dyche’s side was doing. Calvert-Lewin twice forced Mark Flekken into good saves and the Blues boss will say this is another clean sheet and that he has now overseen a run of just one defeat in eight games.

Critics, and there are a growing number of them, will point to that run being built on foundations of sand - a stoppage time equaliser against Fulham, moments of individual brilliance against Crystal Palace and Pickford’s penalty save against Newcastle United and last minute stop at West Ham United all helping Everton survive a multitude of scares.

Yet the headline figures from Saturday afternoon are clearly of concern. A side that had not kept a clean sheet this season, had lost every away match and which had 10 men for almost an hour, left Goodison in celebration. They all but matched Everton for xG too and Dyche will once again be grateful to England’s number one, who saved from Yoane Wissa in the first half when the in-form forward split Everton’s centre backs but could only find an outstretched leg of the goalkeeper. That chance was better than any created by Everton, even with the extra player.

Context, as ever, is crucial. Dyche has steered Everton to safety against the odds twice already and may well do so again this season - he has the track record, he knows what it takes to get enough from a stretched group of players used to playing amid off-the-pitch chaos. There is little appetite within the club to look elsewhere and the past two years are evidence that this manager can do what it takes at this club, for all its problems.

But he needs new answers to old problems. Everton have scored 10 goals in 12 games, they have not scored in 270 minutes against three of the most porous defences in the league.

And while context provides some mitigation for the struggles of the season so far, it also provides a warning. Wolverhampton Wanderers and Crystal Palace have both started to pick up points. Ipswich Town earned a shock win at Tottenham Hotspur a fortnight ago. The gap to the clubs that have had the worst starts to this campaign is decreasing ahead of a fixture list that looks relentless and unforgiving. That is why this was such a big game. It was one of few remaining chances to ease the pressure before it has a chance of becoming unbearable. It was not taken.

The big games coming up present an opportunity Dyche may take - his best work at Everton has often been done under the most intense pressure. Dyche deserves for it to be remembered that, of the games approaching, in the corresponding fixtures last season Everton won at home to Liverpool and Chelsea and were a shocking VAR call away from a point at Arsenal. Longstanding problems need to be addressed quickly for those successes to be echoed, however. And the responsibility for finding those answers is on Dyche. Some boos greeted the final whistle and no-one can say Blues looking with fear to the coming weeks are not justified in doing so.

The saying goes that the night is darkest just before dawn. Everton as a football club are doing everything they can to make the transition to what should be a better future as smooth and trouble-free as possible. Everything, that is, apart from winning games. Dyche has to find a way to change that.