Everton 1 Zenit St Petersburg 0David Moyes claimed he would reserve judgment on Everton's progress until after the champions of Russia had left Goodison Park. Zenit St Petersburg departed defeated last night as Everton sealed qualification and top spot with a 100 per cent record. The Scot now has concrete evidence of the strides being made.
Fortune blessed Everton here with their opponents forced to play for over an hour with 10 men after the ludicrous dismissal of their centre-half Nicolas Lombaerts. The visitors did enough to earn a draw but Tim Cahill, who celebrates his 29th birthday today, pounced six minutes from time to condemn Dick Advocaat's team to a miserable evening after Mikel Arteta had missed from the spot.
Everton opened strongly, but having survived the initial wave Zenit began to turn the tide of the contest. Andrei Arshavin was instrumental in the recovery. His movement, touch and ability to find space in a crowd were qualities shared by several team-mates but with Zenit gaining a foothold they were ludicrously penalised when Lombaerts was adjudged to have denied Cahill a goalscoring opportunity with his hand and was promptly sent off.
Pienaar created the opening with a deft flick that sent the Australian through on goal and around goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeev. His shot from an acute angle brought a superb interception from the Zenit defender, who prevented a certain goal with his thigh and chest at the near post but to even Everton's astonishment the referee, Kristinn Jakobsson, showed Lombaerts red and pointed to the spot. Justice of sorts prevailed when Arteta blazed his spot-kick high over the bar.
Arteta almost made them pay with an ambitious free-kick that forced a fine save from the Zenit goalkeeper from all of 35 yards and Lee Carsley curled a 20-yard shot against the inside of Malafeev's post as Everton sought to capitalise on their fortune. But Zenit remained a threat, with Pavel Pogrebnyak also going close for the 10 men.
Zenit, and in particular Arshavin, continued to threaten despite their handicap and should have opened the scoring twice at the start of the second half. Tim Howard stood his ground to save well from Pogrebnyak and then Arshavin, with a neat turn and delicate chip over the Everton defence, created a glorious chance for Konstantin Zyrianov. His volley high into the Merseyside night-time sky was not worthy of the same move. With six minutes remaining, however, Joleon Lescott forced a fine save from Malefeev and Cahill pounced for his sixth goal in nine games since returning from injury. Moyes' men march on.
EVERTON: Howard, Neville, Jagielka, Lescott, Baines, Pienaar, Cahill, Carsley, Arteta, Johnson (Vaughan 81), McFadden (Anichebe 64). Subs not used: Wessels, Gravesen, Osman, Yakubu, Boyle. Booked: Johnson.
ZENIT ST PETERSBURG: Malafeev, Aniukov (Lee 78), Skrtel, Lombaerts, Kim, Tymoschuk, Zurianov, Shirl, Arshavin, Dominguez (Gorshkov 45), Pogrebniak (Hagen 61). Subs not used: Contofalsky, Radimov, Ionov, Lebedev. Booked: Pogrebniak, Shirl.
Referee: Kristinn Jakobsson (Iceland).
