Everton vs Burnley match report: Kevin Mirallas scores match-winner but Belgian lucky not to join Ashley Barnes in seeing red
Everton 1 Burnley 0: Clarets fume at referee Mike Jones after he awards Everton a penalty and sends off Barnes, only to let Mirallas off after a shocking tackle
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Your support makes all the difference.Burnley once more were nil. If the Premier League’s bottom club do go down, it will not be through lack of fight but a shortage of football’s most basic commodity, goals.
Barnes may have controversially avoided punishment for a wild tackle on Chelsea's Nemanja Matic back in February but there was no escape as two ill-advised challenges - one which did not even connect with an opponent - saw him sent off in first-half added time at Goodison Park.
Burnley were already trailing to Kevin Mirallas's goal and with 10 men they could not claw back that deficit, losing 1-0.
Everton ought to have won by at least a rugby score. Nowhere was this casualness better demonstrated than when Aaron Lennon was awarded a penalty for a tackle by David Jones on the 18-yard line.
Virtually everyone at Goodison expected Leighton Baines, who had scored 15 of his 16 spot-kicks, to have taken it. Instead, up stepped Ross Barkley. The ease with which Heaton saved suggests it will be a while before the invitation is extended again.
Kevin Mirallas’s goal that saw him take two goes at finishing off Seamus Coleman’s cross ensured Everton’s third missed penalty of the season – more than any other team - did not matter as much.
It would, however, have mattered to Dyche that the Belgian was not dismissed for a brutish challenge on George Boyd. “It is impossible for him to stay on,” he said. “We are not the type to surround a referee; maybe we should.”
Burnley had by then lost Ashley Barnes to a second yellow card on half-time. The first was an attempted tackle from behind on James McCarthy that did not make contact, although it might have been a straight red card if he had.
Line-ups:
Everton: (4-2-3-1) Howard; Coleman, Stones, Jagielka, Baines; McCarthy (Besic, 88), Barry; Lennon, Barkley, Mirallas (Lukaku, 61); Koné (Naismith, 80).
Burnley: (4-4-2) Heaton; Trippier, Duff, Shackell, Mee; Boyd (Wallace, 84), Arfield, Jones (Taylor, 84), Barnes; Vokes (Jutkiewicz, 59), Ings.
Referee: Mike Jones
Man of the match: Baines (Everton)
Match rating: 4/10
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