CONSIDERING the importance to their Premier League survival of Thursday night’s game against Newcastle at Goodison Park, Everton weren’t showing enough enterprise.

They had just one shot in a first half during which their opposition had dominated possession with 63 per cent of the ball but hadn’t created much with it bar a headed chance for Chris Wood.

There was added fight from Everton in comparison to the previous outing against Wolves last Sunday, but still little direction.

Then a 21-year-old tied himself to a goalpost at the Gwladys Street end, and the game became the kind of bizarre situation that the Toffees apparently thrive in.

The young protester was difficult to remove, especially as the stewards took bolt cutters to a scissors fight.

Even the protester himself, named by Just Stop Oil Campaign as Louis, began to look uncomfortable in the limelight he had sought as the stewards hacked away at the plastic fastener tied to the post and around his neck.

The Just Stop Oil Campaign demands that “the UK government immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK.”

This is something that has been brewing since the start of the year when in January, oil firm Ithaca Energy was given the go-ahead for its project on Abigail field in the North Sea off Scotland’s east coast.

Last Monday the Morning Star reported on the Students for Survival group, part of the Just Stop Oil movement, who staged sit-down protests in schools across London and Liverpool demanding an end to the exploitation of North Sea gas and oil.

“Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working together to ensure the government commits to halting new fossil fuel licensing and production,” reads a statement on their website.

Said website buckled under the attention received on Thursday night — a sign the protest at Everton had worked and begun to raise awareness.

A supporter of the same campaign had done something similar in the Arsenal vs Liverpool game at Ashburton Grove on Wednesday, but few noticed. 

Goodison Park, however, is used to mad things happening which attract attention so was the ideal theatre.

For Everton in recent times, the attention has come for all the wrong reasons. A big-spending club, but one with little direction, threatened with relegation and an end to the second-longest continuous run in the top flight (behind Arsenal).

It was no surprise, then, that the game’s first key moment in a sporting sense was a negative one for the home side as they had a player sent off for the second time in as many games.

In the first half, they had picked up where they left off against Wolves, which wasn’t a good thing. 

Loads of space in midfield for the opposition, and needing a goal but not creating chances.