Everton 4-0 Wolves: Sean Dyche’s side emphatically end goal drought as Craig Dawson scores twice at the WRONG end

They stood a few feet apart, their feet welded to a thick, white line that must have felt at times like the edge of cliff.

Football management is always this precarious and while Sean Dyche shuffled a few paces back from the brink, as Everton rediscovered the art of scoring, Gary O’Neil’s situation became more precarious.

Wolves were impoverished and how those who travelled to Merseyside let him know.

Everton are not known for their attacking prowess but they plundered four here – two of which went the way of hapless Wolves defender Craig Dawson – to register their biggest win since May 2023 and could easily have had double that with a bit of fortune.

‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ O’Neil was told by the away section, as Wolves lurched from one calamity to another before they followed up with the even more cutting: ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning.’

Those are the kind of messages that are heard in boardrooms.

Dawson found the net at the wrong end in the 49th minute and then again in the 72nd minute

The Toffees had not scored at all in their previous four matches before hitting Wolves for four

This had been billed as a relegation battle but the truth of it was only one team looked threatened by that particular outcome and it wasn’t the one in blue and white. When Everton are this physical, they are formidable and it actually makes you wonder why they ever find themselves in difficult.

Is it a question of attitude? You can draw your own conclusions on that point but, in this contest, nobody could be faulted on that respect.

With the locals reserving the right to offer a judgement, having been let down so much in recent months, the onus on was on Dyche’s team to win them over.

The six barren hours that had elapsed since Beto’s equaliser against Fulham on October 26 had felt double that amount, such has been the paucity of Everton’s play and you wondered what might happen if Wolves had took an early advantage here; they had opportunities, too.

Jorgen Strand Larsen scuffed the first opening wide after 63 seconds before Matheus Cunha invited Jordan Pickford into his first action of the evening in the seventh minute, the England goalkeeper plunging to his left to avert the danger and muffle the audible anxiety.

No team in the country walks a dividing line like Everton: go behind and the rage broils from all sides; poke their noses in front and there is a palpable release of tension.

It would have been easy for Dyche’s men to fall into the darkness here but, to his relief, they started to soar.

Full credit, then, to Young for having the character to take the free-kick after Dominic Calvert-Lewin had been toppled by that secured Everton’s 10th minute lead, the veteran deliberately keeping his shot low as it fizzed and skidded beyond Jose Sa’s grasp and nestled in the bottom corner.

Everton’s first goal of the game on Wednesday came directly from an Ashley Young free-kick

No 8 Orel Mangala then doubled Everton’s lead 33 minutes into the game at Goodison Park

Everton manager Sean Dyche (left) and Wolves’ Gary O’Neil (right) pictured on the sideline

One should have become two six minutes later but trust that old passion killer VAR for making a simple situation complicated: Orel Mangala was adjudged to have been interfering with play before James Tarkowski headed in but the decision was passed back from Stockley Park like a hot potato.

To the sound of ear-splitting fury, the goal was chalked off but the officials, unwittingly, had aided Everton’s cause. The furnace was turned up to maximum heat, those in Blue began running that bit harder and, suddenly, Wolves were melting.

Mangala walloped in a wonderful strike in the 33rd minute and you knew, instinctively, that Wolves would not come back.

They folded completely after the break when Dawson, in the 49th and 72nd minute, put through his own net under pressure from Calvert-Lewin.

‘Gary, Gary, what’s the score?’ the away fans crowed. Like his team, he had no answers.