Everton started April without a league win in 2024. They end it safe. Everton correspondent Joe Thomas tries to pinpoint the moment this season turned around.

As St James’ Park erupted in celebration, Sean Dyche stepped into the away dugout and turned his back to proceedings. It was seconds before he faced the pitch again and few people, if anyone, will know what was going through his mind during what would have been a troubling moment.

As Dan Burn took in the adulation from his own supporters he was halted by the announcement of a VAR check. Believing Everton were 2-0 down, Dyche initiated a triple substitution, perhaps a throw of the dice as all seemed lost at Newcastle United.

And then everything changed. VAR, so often an enemy for Everton, ruled Alexander Isak had stepped offside when he made the run to meet the quickly-taken free-kick he then crossed for Burn. Well, almost everything. Handed a reprieve, Dyche remained committed to his changes. And they changed the game.

This has been a long, complicated, arduous season for Everton. Genuine progress on the pitch has been undermined not just by the points deductions and leadership vacuum off it, but also marred by spells of poor form from a threadbare squad that has been tested to the limit. The fight is over now after a week in which Goodison and those in Royal Blue hit a level of intensity that blew away Nottingham Forest, Brentford and, most impressively, Liverpool

In the space of six days Everton went from facing a third consecutive survival fight to the death to preparing for the first pressure-free Premier League games the club has had for almost three years – certainly the first under Dyche. That this followed the wretched humiliation at Chelsea makes the comeback all the more remarkable.

Identifying a turning point for a side that started this month without a league win this calendar year and ends it 11 points clear of trouble is an imprecise experiment. But those minutes in which Dyche opted for a rare gamble from the bench, a decision initially sparked by a goal that did not stand, are a real contender.

Newcastle had overwhelmed Everton for the hour leading up to that disallowed goal. The away side looked bedraggled and a second looked inevitable, Jordan Pickford’s heroics against his fiercest critics the only thing keeping the game in the balance. When Burn’s back post effort was ruled out, the atmosphere changed. A crowd expectant of another goal began to question whether this would be their day. The Everton supporters, confined to the heavens of the North East, dominated the soundtrack for the final half an hour and Andre Gomes, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and James Garner swung the balance of play towards Everton.

When Ashley Young won a last minute penalty, it was deserved. When Calvert-Lewin stepped up and scored, he ended a torrid run of months and almost two dozen games without a goal. Everton’s winless run stretched to a club Premier League record of 13 games – but the manner of the fightback offered hope. Dyche was buoyant in the post-match interviews as a result. He said: “Before the game I showed them some clips of when we were winning games freely and keeping clean sheets, scoring goals and no-one was questioning anything. And suddenly you get on that run, it sneaks up on you and you haven’t won and the noise changes. I said it wasn’t that long ago when we were playing like we did in that second half, with that edge, you can smell it.

“When you see a team playing like that there is just that feel, they are handy these, they are going to get a goal or whatever. I could sense that in the second half and I think everyone could and that was pleasing, and pleasing for the whole squad. We made changes, some for freshness. We have people working very hard despite the run, an awkward run of course, but they are still working really hard and we ask a lot of them and I was pleased for them.”

Dyche’s side began that awful 13 game stretch with an heroic, unlucky defeat at Tottenham Hotspur but had started to discover new ways to throw away points as winter became spring, failing to hold on against 10 men Brighton and Hove Albion and conspiring to the most ridiculous of stoppage time defeats against West Ham United and Bournemouth.

The point at Newcastle provided something to build on and Everton went one step further four days later in what had become the biggest game of their season, against Burnley. The win was narrow, unconvincing and, as Dyche later conceded, “ugly by design”. But the three points ended the winless streak, provided a boost in the relegation battle and landed a heavy blow on a side trying to catch them.

The winning feeling did not last and the following week Everton travelled to a vulnerable Chelsea and were humiliated. Four of the six goals that night came in an awful first half. At the final whistle, James Tarkowski admitted he was “embarrassed” by the performance while Dyche questioned the players’ divergence from his tactics. The following days were chastening at Finch Farm as stark conversations saw Dyche tell the players he was going nowhere if they were hoping he would walk. His efforts to rally the side included introspection and reflection on his own job.

“Every detail has to be better because that was miles off”, he said, “miles off my own expectation of me, my planning and preparation, and making sure the team are in the place they should be. The responsibility does lie with me but I think here we have been trying to build a squad mentality where everyone plays their part and that was a big reminder the other night, certainly to myself, that there are no shortcuts, there is no easy way through any of this, you have to win games, you have to be ready and prepared mentally, physically, tactically, technically to go and deliver and we quite obviously fell short.”

His demeanour in his pre-Nottingham Forest media duties suggested the Chelsea fallout had been tough and that he chose to ditch his suit for a tracksuit indicated that a man who demands all focus is on ‘controlling the controllable’ was grasping for any opportunity for a change of fortune.

That came against Forest. In a tight game, with both sides under huge pressure, Everton supporters rallied and their side just about responded. It took two long range efforts, three contentious penalty calls to fall the Blues’ way, a superb Pickford save from Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White to miss a glorious chance to equalise. But Everton earned the win and it shifted momentum at the bottom.

That win released much of the pressure, which was completely diffused with the Merseyside derby win. Everton built on the positive result days earlier to deliver a performance of intensity and aggression that Liverpool could not cope with. Pickford had to be on form but Everton were comfortably the better side as Calvert-Lewin and Jarrad Branthwaite delivered a landmark win and allowed Dyche to become the first manager to beat Liverpool at Goodison since 2010. The jeopardy was gone when all doubt was removed through the win over Brentford on Saturday and Dyche was bullish after the match. A week earlier he led his team out against Forest unsure how they would react to the collapse in west London. Six days later, the job was done.

That Chelsea defeat presented a major challenge to Dyche and the backroom staff but the results that saved Everton were built on that last 30 minutes at Newcastle. Had the Blues gone 2-0 down they might not have been provided with a comeback to galvanise a flagging squad. Those closing stages laid the foundations for the revival too. Calvert-Lewin broke his drought in the north east then grabbed the winner against Burnley and the crucial second goal against Liverpool. Pickford responded to the last minute horror show at Bournemouth with a man of the match display in his most challenging environment. Chelsea aside, his save from Wood against Forest and stops from Darwin Nunez, Luis Diaz and Mo Salah were crucial to the derby win. Chelsea may have been Everton’s rock bottom. But the groundwork for the week that changed everything arguably started with the goal that never was at Newcastle.