Everton’s spirit shone through as they battled to a 4-2 EFL Cup win away at plucky League One outfit Lincoln City.
Everton’s spirit shone through as they battled to a 4-2 EFL Cup win away at plucky League One outfit Lincoln City.
Following Friday’s feeble 2-0 defeat at Aston Villa, Marco Silva selected a strong side at Sincil Bank but his team found themselves behind after just 20 seconds.
It was frantic, even from the kick-off, and after a couple of deflections, Jack Payne found space on the left and cut the ball back to Harry Anderson who guided home past Jordan Pickford.
The Toffees were clearly rattled and that allowed the League One side to set the tone, Danny Cowley’s side playing some nice football but failing to double their advantage.
They were made to pay on 35 minutes thanks to a pure moment of brilliance from Lucas Digne. The Frenchman took control from a free-kick and from 30 yards out, whipped an incredible effort past Grant Smith.
The end-to-end action continued to flow after the break and Everton went ahead after 59 minutes. Gylfi Sigurdsson was the man fouled by Anthony O’Connor and the Icelander dusted himself off to fire home.
That could have been it for the Imps but they never gave up and equalised through Bruno Andrade after 70 minutes, the Portuguese smashing in after a cross was only half cleared.
However, there was to be no fairytale and Everton new boy Alex Iwobi proved to be the anti-hero for the passionate home fans as after knocking on the door in both the defeat to Villa and earlier in Wednesday’s game, the Nigerian nodded home to make it 3-2.
The goal clearly took the wind out of Lincoln’s sails and it was left to Richarlison to complete the scoring, completing a fine move by heading home Digne’s pinpoint cross.
