Burnley v Everton: Premier League – live! | Football

45+3 min: Burnley are still giving it everything. From the second corner, they keep it alive and manage a game of head tennis. And now there’s yet another corner…

45+1 min: Lennon, still good going forward, floats a cross over and wins another corner, turned over the bar by Richarlison.

44 min: So Burnley’s intensity has backfired. And Everton have two goals in an away game in the league for the first time since August, when they won 2-0 at Brighton.

“Evening Tim,” says Gary Byrne. “Who did you annoy to get stuck with this game on such a glorious night of Champions League football?” Ha. I volunteered! Love a good relegation scrap.

We meet again, Mr Pope. And the result is the same as Richarlison takes less time and goes to the keeper’s left again.

Mike Dean goes to the monitor. There is contact, maybe instep on instep rather than ankle… And he gives it!

39 min: Everton want another penalty as Lennon clips Mykolenko’s ankle… Mike Dean says no, but the VAR may take a different view.

37 min: Richarlison jinks past two defenders down the Everton left, but his cross loops over everyone.

35 min: When not slipping Lennon away down the right, Burnley are lumping it towards Weghorst. It’s primitive, but with no Michael Keane at the back it might just come off once.

33 min: Lennon is still enjoying himself down the right, because Richarlison is resting on his laurels rather than tracking back.

30 min: Pope does well to take a cross off the head of Richarlison. It’s end to end with both teams being enterprising. Everton have had more quality in attack, Burnley more quantity.

“Evening Tim,” says Stephen Carr. “I’ve never seen a more compelling argument for a European Super League than this game…” Harsh!

27 min: Everton are now playing football. A decent shot from Gordon is blocked by Maxwel Cornet, bravely, as it hits him in the balls. The VAR does a check for handball, a clear case of adding insult to injury.

25 min: Weghorst attempts a knock-down and succeeds only in starting an Everton attack, which would end in a simple header for Iwobi if it were not for a vital intervention from Collins, the man of the first 25 mins.

24 min: Everton get a good cross in from the left and it’s heading for the head of Doucoure, but Cornet does well to track back and beat him to it with a neat cushioned header to Pope. Then Richarlison gets a glimpse of goal again, only to send the ball into Row Z. An Everton corner comes to nowt.

While I was distracted by the goals, Richard Hirst was emailing. “The stats say Everton three fouls after six minutes,” he notes, “so not soft Southerners, but probably not finishing with 11 players either.” Ha, well, they’re on a run of reds: three in their last three games.

19 min: Everton have a spring in their step now, after being given that freebie, but Burnley are still showing the greater intensity.

Richarlison takes his time, stutters, and scores! Low to Pope’s left.

Gordon gets manhandled by Westwood, and Mike Dean points to the spot! It’s arguable, but the VAR may not see it as a howler…

15 min: Lennon, enjoying his stroll down memory lane, wins another corner on the right. Everton deal with it better, which isn’t saying much. Frank Lampard’s face is like thunder.

Aaron Lennon wins a corner and Nathan Collins is unmarked at the back post. He has time to line up a neat side-foot volley and park it in the far corner. It had been coming.

11 min: Everton finally get up the field with Gordon working hard on the right. They win a free kick in the middle, as Josh Brownhill rugby-tackles Richarlison (another early yellow), but they can’t do anything with it.

8 min: Chance! The ball falls to Ashley Westwood on the edge of the are, inviting him to curl it into the far corner. He curls it wide, but Burnley are still making the running.

6 min: There’s a lot of noise and it’s spurring Burnley on to win the 50-50s, but they haven’t troubled Jordan Pickford yet. I was wrong about Everton’s formation, by the way – it seems to be a 4-3-3 with Holgate in midfield. If he’d stayed at centre-back, he might not be on a yellow.

3 min: A yellow card! For Mason Holgate. Everton are threatening to become a shambles already, but they survive the resulting free kick.

An email! “I was delighted to read Sean Dyche’s exhortation to his players to ‘kick it in the net’,” says Peter Oh. “Given that Everton have a Latin motto, I wondered how the Burnley battle cry would sound in the old tongue. According to Popular Search Engine Translate, it is calcitrare en rete.

“In any case, I think we might be in for a dire nil-nil (null ut nulla).”

1 min: The first team to get forward are Burnley, pushing down the left and winning a couple of throw-ins, which come to nothing.

The players are out there and they take the knee before Mike Dean blows the whistle.

The bosses have spoken. “We need to be calm,” says Frank Lampard. “We need to play football,” says Sean Dyche, “and score goals.”

Sean Dyche brings back Nathan Collins, Maxwell Cornet and Jay Rodriguez as Kevin Long, Jack Cork and Dwight McNeil drop to the bench.

Burnley (4-4-2): Pope; Roberts, Collins, Tarkowski, Taylor; Lennon, Westwood, Brownhill, Cornet; Weghorst, Rodriguez.

Subs: Hennessey, Long, Lowton, Thomas, Stephens, McNeil, Cork, Barnes, Vydra.

Frank Lampard makes one enforced change, with Jarrad Branthwaite replacing the suspended Michael Keane, plus one of his own volition – Anthony Gordon for Demarai Gary. And Dele Alli still can’t get a start.

Everton (3-4-3): Pickford; Holgate, Godfrey, Branthwaite; Kenny, Doucoure, Iwobi, Mykolenko; Gordon, Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison.

Subs: Begovic, Coleman, Delph, Holgate, Price, Welch, Alli, El Ghazi, Gray, Rondon.

Evening everyone and welcome to tonight’s big match. The Champions League is all very well, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of existential angst. A relegation tussle at Turf Moor on a wet Wednesday night: what more could you ask?

When these two teams last met, in mid-September, Everton came from behind to win 3-1 and moved up to fourth in the Premier League, just above Man City. Burnley were 14 places below them. Now the gap has narrowed to two places and four points. In the table since mid-September, Everton are bottom, while Burnley are bossing it in 17th.

The contrast in styles is delicious. Everton’s idea of coping with a crisis is to parachute in Frank Lampard, Dele Alli and Donny van de Beek. Burnley just keep calm and carry on being Burnleyesque: same old 4-4-2, same old tenacity, same old instinct for eking out a draw, same old manager in Sean Dyche, who took over at Turf Moor when Lampard was still scoring goals at Stamford Bridge.

This is a game that’s fiendishly hard to predict. The form guide insists that Everton will lose and Burnley won’t win. Their three league victories this season have all come against soft southerners – Brentford, Brighton and Spurs when they were still being Spursy. Do Everton, under Lampard, now qualify as honorary soft southerners? Tonight will tell.