English FA Premiership / Everton 0-4 Bolton: Seconds after David Moyes stepped into the press room for his tea-time debrief, the lights flickered, dimming momentarily as so often happens before a power cut.
Happily this proved an exception, leaving the powerful wattage to illuminate every line on a face that has evidently suffered from the considerable amount of frowning involved in managing Everton.
As Bolton's Stelios Giannakopoulos, whose two goals added to Moyes's misery, put it: "It is a bad time for Everton; it is a big club going through a gloomy time."
Not to mention facing relegation, a peril increased by this failure to out-muscle or to out-pass Sam Allardyce's men.
Bolton began badly, their failure to build even simple passing sequences forcing them to resort to aggressive default mode as Everton, themselves no shrinking violets, were bullied off the ball.
It was hardly enjoyable but there was nevertheless something to admire, if a little grudgingly, about the way, undeterred by a first-minute booking, Kevin Davies set about softening up David Weir and Joseph Yobo. Davies was once bought by Blackburn and hyped as "the new Alan Shearer" before proving a spectacular flop, but at times here he might easily have been mistaken for Newcastle's number nine.
Appropriately, Davies claimed the opener, his looping header sneaking across the line after going in off the far post before James Beattie - who had played him onside - could scoop it clear.
Although James McFadden had a goal ruled out for offside, Everton rarely looked like scoring and Allardyce deepened their misery courtesy of some second-half tactical re-calibration that saw the impressive young Republic of Ireland defender Joey O'Brien switched from right to left-back, thereby facilitating Gary Speed's relocation into central midfield, and Ricardo Vaz Te liberated from the bench. Boasting an impressive change of pace and passing range, Vaz Te proved hugely influential, creating Bolton's second with a fine delivery to Giannakopoulos to score.
Speed scored Bolton's third from the penalty spot after Nuno Valente manhandled Davies. "The introduction of Vaz Te brought a new dimension to the game," said the Everton old boy, who created the fourth by dispossessing Leon Osman and cueing up Giannakopoulos to shoot into the top corner.
Everton might have found Bolton even harder to handle had Tony Hibbert been sent off for a crude first-half challenge on Giannakopoulos as Moyes's men allowed themselves to be wound up by Allardyce's awkward squad.
"You won't see defending like ours from a Sunday park team," he said. "It was extremely demoralising." Judging by the wholesale booing that greeted the final whistle, some Goodison regulars doubt his ability to prevent the Premiership lights from finally going out on Everton.
Guardian Service
