Everton vs Stoke City match report: Marko Arnautovic's secures dramatic Stoke win with 90th-minute penalty

Everton 3 Stoke City 4

Marko Arnautovic scores the winner from the spot (Getty Images)

Until you remember this was the club that gave Stanley Matthews to the world, the thought of Xherdan Shaqiri at Stoke seems rather odd – like watching the man at No 23 pull into his drive with an Aston Martin.

When he finally agreed, after much prompting, to sign a five-year contract to play in the Potteries, the suspicion, voiced by Liverpool’s one-time Swiss defender, Stéphane Henchoz, was that Shaqiri had done it purely for the money. “Why else would he join Stoke City?”

If that were the case he has paid his employers back with one of the goals of the season.

Stoke may have beaten both Manchester clubs and Chelsea this season but this victory, secured with a last-minute penalty, given away by John Stones and converted by Marko Arnautovic – despite slipping while taking it – was probably the most memorable of the lot.

“This has been a strange year and perhaps we are witnessing the changing of the guard, if the likes of Leicester can go all the way,” said the Stoke manager, Mark Hughes. “We have disappointed on occasions but we have had some big results too.”

The lesson of this year’s Premier League is that everyone can now afford someone, and Everton and Stoke have used relatively modest budgets well. At one stage the game became almost a personal duel between Shaqiri and Romelu Lukaku, who answered with two goals of his own.

It says something about the Everton striker that his last 10 matches have produced 11 goals and only three of those have come in games his club have won. Their manager, Roberto Martinez, who was bitterly critical of Mark Clattenburg’s decision to award the penalty, conceded that Everton failing to see games out was becoming “a recurrent theme and that will be the difference between us becoming a top team”.

Xherdan Shaqiri is congratulated by his team-mates (GETTY IMAGES)

These were Shaqiri’s first goals since exchanging San Siro for the Britannia Stadium. The first was very good, finishing off a move that involved Stoke’s big three of Bojan Krkic, Arnautovic and finished off by the boy whose parents escaped the civil war in Kosovo for Switzerland.

He was nicknamed “the Alpine Messi” when he broke through with Basel. The real thing could not have bettered the goal Shaqiri scored just before the interval. It was a goal from nowhere, a long ball from Bojan that he allowed to bounce twice before side-footing it from an improbable angle over Tim Howard and into the net beneath the Gwladys End.

Yet, for much of an enthralling afternoon it seemed he might not even end up on the winning side. Lukaku received a ball from James McCarthy standing on the penalty spot with his back to goal. He turned his marker viciously and drove a shot past Jack Butland for the first of what would be several equalisers.

McCarthy was withdrawn soon after. He had not played since coming off in another thriller in which Everton were denied late – the 3-3 draw at Bournemouth in November – and he may have returned too soon.

Curiously, the man who replaced him, Tom Cleverley, also failed to last the afternoon and suffered an Achilles injury immediately after providing Lukaku’s second. It was a long ball that split Erik Pieters and Philipp Wollscheid in the Stoke defence. The striker took it down on his chest and finished emphatically.

At that stage, Everton seemed the likeliest winners but it meant that when the game reached a climax dominated, in Hughes’ words, by “tired limbs and tired minds”, they lacked a second holding midfielder to partner Gareth Barry.

Everton finally went ahead as Ross Barkley raced to the byline and pulled back a low cross that Gerard Deulofeu clipped home. The least they could have expected was a point but both Merseyside clubs have out-of-form goalkeepers and 10 minutes from time Howard, on the edge of his own six-yard box, palmed a cross into the path of Joselu. He is a striker born in Germany of Spanish parents and his finish had the power associated with one and the style of the other. It was now a matter of who kept their nerve. It was Stoke.