The Chris Beesley match verdict from the Emirates as Everton go down to a 2-0 defeat to Premier League champions Arsenal and suffer a new injury blow

The clocks are only just going back but Everton’s wafer-thin squad already feels like it’s living on borrowed time when it comes to standing up to the rigours of a gruelling season at the elite level of English football after champions Arsenal defeated them in the most routine of fashions in what was already the Blues’ toughest Premier League away day.

Jack Grealish was missing through sickness at the Emirates Stadium but such are the paucity of David Moyes’ options in key areas of the pitch, the last time Everton were on their travels a fortnight earlier he deployed Jarrad Branthwaite at left-back. Like many, this correspondent queried the decision by pointing out that the England international is a Rolls-Royce of a player and you don’t go off-roading in a luxury vehicle.

The 24-year-old, who through a series of hamstring problems, was restricted to just 10 outings last season, picked up a knock in East Yorkshire, but was fit to return to central defence against Chelsea last weekend. So, after what have been a testing couple of weekends against a couple of the division’s elite from the capital, it’s a small mercy that Branthwaite was absent here due to concussion procedure rather than a fresh injury problem.

He might well be returning to the left-back berth soon though given that the Blues’ only natural option in the position Vitalii Mykolenko endured a torrid time here before being forced off through injury. That setback ensured that James Garner – who started last season in the position on another occasion that the Ukraine international was sidelined, and an option who many would have preferred to see there at the Tigers – ended the match filling in.

Following a promising start to the campaign, going eight games unbeaten in all competitions, set against the backdrop of a shambolic end to the transfer window when The Friedkin Group seemingly turned off the financial tap that left Everton’s squad lopsided and chronically short of numbers overall, those lack of options are now starting to bite.

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Blues boss Moyes must wish he could turn back the clock, perhaps to before September 1 to reiterate to the club's stayaway and now wantaway owners the importance of not adequately preparing your team for nine months of grind in world football’s toughest domestic competition, but perhaps 15 years or so. That’s because based upon some of the reports we hear from training when he still shows bits and pieces of his old magic, first-team coach Leighton Baines might still be the best left-back at Finch Farm.

Who knows, perhaps Ainsley Maitland-Niles, the new right-back Moyes waited almost 20 months to bring into the club, might get a reprieve on the other side of defence? The former Arsenal stalwart who spent 20 years man and boy with the Gunners before finally departing for Olympique Lyonnais in 2023 after no fewer than four loan spells away, was denied an emotional return here after varying degrees of culpability in both Hull City’s goals against Everton and Chelsea’s opener the previous weekend.

With Merlin Rohl taking his place and Jake O’Brien having also reprised the role he played for the best part of a season-and-a-half under Moyes, just where does the 29-year-old now find himself among the right-back pecking order? Rubbing salt in the wounds, ahead of this fixture, Highbury legend Alan Smith told the ECHO that he didn’t even think of Maitland-Niles as a “proper” defender.

There wasn’t much proper defending from anyone in the Blues side just seven minutes into the contest as the team whose supporters sing Champions of England – we know what we are; were instead gifted the kind of goal you might see from the Dog and Duck in Sunday League football. Last season, Arsenal became the most feared team in the land, not through the kind of free-flowing football their last title-winning sides played under Arsene Wenger, but through dogged effectiveness from set-pieces.

Their opener here came from a dead ball situation, but it was hardly the kind of slick routine you spend hours perfecting on the training ground. Goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and Harrison Armstrong both went for the same ball as it bounced down, Mykolenko took a swipe at thin air and Ezri Konsa was on hand to bundle in from point blank range.

In Grealish’s absence, Tyrique George who was one of Everton’s shining lights throughout pre-season and has been unfortunate not to be starting of late, looked like their most purposeful attacking option and, combining well with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall at times, he had at shot that flashed across goal that was deflected off Ben White.

There was nothing clearcut though and when another Arsenal centre-back found the net on 68 minutes, the game was abruptly over as a contest. Again, it was all too easy and Mykolenko – shortly before he was taken off – allowed White to get past him and put in a lofted cross for Gabriel at the back post who had shaken off the attentions of O’Brien and guided the ball into the net off his face.

At that point, the Blues must just have hoped they could escape from this fixture unscathed but there was no such luck. This result was never going to define the campaign but there is no let-up when they return to action, they have three games in the space of seven days, the results of which could shape the direction of their season.