Carlisle vs Everton match report: Ross Barkley’s calypso rhythm is too sweet for Carlisle

Carlisle 0 Everton 3

Ross Barkley (left) scores Everton’s third goal at Brunton Park (Getty Images)

It might have been the supreme inhospitable environment for Everton – cold, bleak, post-match showers in a mobile unit outside the ground and local euphoria befitting an occasion that felt like a light at the end of very long flooded tunnel. “It will feel to many like the first and only game on earth,” as Carlisle’s News & Star rather breathlessly put it yesterday morning.

Theory and reality were two very different concepts. The gratitude this place felt for Everton’s contribution to its flood relief – £8,000 from one of their fans’ forums alone, it was announced before the match – translated into a football generosity which Carlisle were soundly punished for. Everton’s defensive vulnerability only exists for as long as there are individuals in front of them ready to snap at their heels and break up their ornate passing.

Give the side space for self-expression and their aesthetic is one of the best in the country. That’s certainly what we witnessed in a side who are poised to add Senegal striker Oumar Niasse to their ranks today, having had a £13.5m offer accepted by Lokomotiv Moscow.

It helped that they happen to possess a player so lacking in ego and vanity that he will give up as much of himself to a walkover match like this as to a League Cup semi-final. It was calypso football Ross Barkley gave us at times: a stellar contribution. Tottenham Hotspur’s Dele Alli is the source of all the talk in the country but here is a player whose less discussed contribution is of greater significance when England and the summer are concerned.

The Carlisle applause which greeted Barkley’s departure 15 minutes before full-time reflected his contribution of tricks, touches, step-overs and razor-sharp delivery.

“A quality, quality player,” Carlisle manager Keith Curle said of him at the end. “Some of [my players] were trying to get his shirt [when they were] getting off the pitch and [even then] they weren’t quick enough!”

That Barkley played 75 minutes in a strong Everton side reflected the significance that the FA Cup has come to assume for Roberto Martinez, a manager facing unfathomable levels of antipathy. A journey to Wembley would provide a retort to those who want him gone.

The anxieties had vanished in the 97 seconds it took a distracted Carlisle defence to allow Everton to go a goal ahead. A second was added in fewer than 15 minutes: all hopes gone. “Nervous energy” is what Curle said had allowed his side to concede so early, though the left side of his defence had a fundamental vulnerability.

That much was clear from the moment Seamus Coleman played inside Macaulay Gillesphey the ball which Aaron Lennon eased onto before racing ahead to level a pass which Arouna Koné tapped in as if concluding a training-ground exercise.

It precipitated a first half of exhibition football by the visitors. Barkley might have been at its hub but the roving wing-back Bryan Oviedo was initially the most eye-catching exponent – trading intricate passes with Barkley before a cross from which Lennon squeezed a second goal beyond Mark Gillespie. The goalkeeper will reflect he could have done better. There was no strength in numbers, despite the five-man defence Curle deployed.

It was a little of the spirit of Curle the player you wanted in the home side as they bounced off those Evertonians they tried to quell. It was more soft squeeze than high press, with only the striker Derek Asamoah offering anything like the surprise occasions like this are supposed to be about. He’s one of those curious nomads of the lower leagues, whose 11 clubs in 16 years have taken him from Sofia to South Korea and all points in between. His race into the penalty area to draw a save from Joel Robles, Oviedo in vain pursuit, was one of his three efforts before the break.

There were strong intermittent challenges from Michael Raynes and Brandon Comley, piling into Barkley after he had nutmegged Gillesphey and broke into the area. But there was little more intent than that from Curle’s players.

The manager attempted something radical after the break, removing Gillesphey after an afternoon to consign to the darkest recesses of his memory, and Gary Dicker, a player craving a move to Kilmarnock today. There was a sudden impact – a long ball which Everton’s central defence misjudged allowed Asamoah to get through and release a shot – but it was the briefest let-up. Barkley had already almost walked the ball through to goal just beyond the hour before wrapping matters up with his goal a few minutes later. A long period of possession concluded with Leon Osman finding Barkley on the left-hand side of the area, from where his shot was deflected in off the top of Mark Ellis’s head.

Though a few dismal fans made racist taunts, their impulse reaction to the second goal, it was a day in which football’s capacity to put on a game and look after its own could be celebrated. “A lesson on how to face adversity and put on a show,” Martinez said of the occasion. “A credit to themselves, not just the game but the way they conducted themselves today,” Curle said of Everton. All told, not exactly an environment conducive to punching a football heavyweight flat on the nose.