Everton are unbeaten through six Premier League games and sitting fifth, and if that's all you look at, this is a fine season so far. David Moyes doesn't see it that way, and he's the one who was actually standing on the touchline.
After the 2-2 draw at Hull, Moyes didn't reach for the usual manager's deflection about tough away days and good points on the road. He said it straight: "A really frustrating day. We get a draw and it's a decent point away from home. Hull have done really well here but we should have won the game. We had very few performing today. I'm frustrated with it a little bit." That's a manager telling you his team beat themselves.
The shape of the afternoon backs him up. Hull went ahead early in the second half after an error from Ainsley Maitland-Niles let Joe Gelhardt in. Everton responded well, twice: Kieran Dewsbury-Hall leveled from a corner, then Thierno Barry put them 2-1 up with a finish from the center of the box. Then a substitute, Mohamed Belloumi, walked through and equalized. Everton had the game in hand and couldn't close it out.
Look at the final whistle and you can make a case for taking this in stride: unbeaten in six, fifth in the table, a point away from home against a side that had done well just to be level by that stage. Offer Everton that record before the season started and plenty would have taken it without blinking. Points on the board matter more than how you get them, and a draw at a promoted club isn't a crisis.
But that argument only works if you ignore who conceded the lead and how. Maitland-Niles was directly at fault for Hull's opener. Everton had already been denied a cushion earlier in the game when Brennan Johnson had a goal ruled out for offside, which makes the scoreline look like two points Everton let slip through their own mistakes. When your manager says you should have won it, and the goals against came from your own errors rather than the opponent doing anything extraordinary, you don't get to file this under "good point."
The fixtures ahead make the shrug even harder to justify. Chelsea come to Goodison next, then it's away to Arsenal. Draws like this one are the kind you can absorb against the teams at the top of the table. They're much harder to justify against a side Everton should be putting away at home.
Moyes isn't wrong to be annoyed, and nobody inside that building should be telling him to calm down because the run is unbeaten. An unbeaten run built on this many draws is a team that keeps finding ways not to win games it's good enough to win.
