Southampton v Everton: Premier League – live!

11.41am EDT 11:41

81 min “NBC commentator insists Digne red not called for,” tweets Ron Stack, “says a ‘more football-trained eye’ would see it differently.”

I don’t know – I’d need to see it again, because doing MBMs, you spend as much time watching fingers and console as the actual game, but it looked bang to rights on first half-glance. I’m not sure who gave that opinion, but I’ve been watching football for 38 years; how many are necessary to be deemed “football-trained”? I daresay the officials have a few years in them too.

11.37am EDT 11:37

80 min Everton finally get Calvert-Lewin on the ball in the box, but he’s double-teamed ad easily unloaded.

11.37am EDT 11:37

78 min Southampton fancy more here and win a corner down the right which Betrand swings in towards the far post, where Vestergaard, 9”4 tall, has somehow got himself in a battle with Gordon, 3”5 tall. But he can only head over the bar.

11.36am EDT 11:36

77 min “Sashed kits,” emails Ed Thorpe. “Can we have a shout-out for this lovely effort from Dulwich Hamlet Women, which is so nice the men sometimes borrow it as a third kit?”

A bit Party Rings, but very smart nevertheless.

Photograph: Ed Thorpe

11.34am EDT 11:34

76 min Calvert-Lewin has barely had a kick, and tearing down the left, he’s easily thwarted by Bednarek.

11.33am EDT 11:33

75 min Digne will miss the away games with Newcastle and Fulham, which sandwich the home game with Manchester United. With Richarlison also absent for the first two of those and Coleman out injured, they’ve got a problem.

11.31am EDT 11:31

73 min Digne insists he didn’t mean it and hoofs something on his way down the tunnel; if only there was some course of dealing to give us an insight into his intention.

11.30am EDT 11:30

72 min RED CARD! Lucas Digne is sent off!

Dearie me, what a misplacing of noggin that is! Walker-Peters runs away from Digne, who has a hack, misses, raises arms which makes all the difference, then administers a stamp to the achilles. See you in three games mate; absolute later.

Digne fouls Walker-Peters before being sent off. Photograph: Frank Augstein/Reuters

Updated at 11.32am EDT

11.29am EDT 11:29

71 min “It would be helpful for the neutral if Southampton could decide if they’re going to be woeful or decent,” says Stephen Carr, “as I’m struggling to keep up.”

They’ve been good for quite sometime, I’d say, and they’ve been very good tonight.

11.28am EDT 11:28

70 min Bern “bites yer legs” Ard accidentally clatters Walker-Peters, who comes through on his blind side. He’s down briefly, but we’re quickly on with the game.

11.26am EDT 11:26

69 min Everton are pressing now, but still struggling to create. A clincher looks more likely than a livener.

11.25am EDT 11:25

65 min I’ve just discovered the Clive Allen played for seven London clubs, if we count his not playing for Arsenal. Can anyone beat that? I also recall the absolutely lush kit he wore for Bordeaux, complete with long shorts. This isn’t quite it, but is also nice.

Photograph: VI-Images/VI-Images via Getty Images

11.22am EDT 11:22

64 min In a game almost entirely devoid of reducers, it takes the smallest man on the pitch to administer one, Bernard clattering Romeu. He’s booked, and would be well advised to watch his step from here on in.

Bernard is shown a yellow card by referee Kevin Friend. Photograph: Naomi Baker/Reuters

Updated at 11.26am EDT

11.21am EDT 11:21

63 min Looking again, Ings might’ve been marginally ahead of play. He must’ve left it for the man coming in.

11.20am EDT 11:20

62 min What?! Redmond collects a loose ball after useful foraging by Adams, slipping outside him to Armstrong; his cross is a doozy, but somehow Ings manages to avoid tapping it home! Not a clue.

11.19am EDT 11:19

61 min I saw Gordon play for Everton in the League Cup game against Salford. He looked a serious talent, and my guess is he’ll play in behind Calvert-Lewin.

11.18am EDT 11:18

59 min “No discussion on sash kits would be complete without mentioning Crystal Palace. Here’s a mid-80s beauty.”

The one I found was earlier than that, but it’s the same idea. I assume the photo was taken after Allen signed for Palace from Arsenal, who he’d joined for £1.25m only to leave without playing a game, in a swap deal for Kenny Sansom.

Photograph: Getty Images

11.16am EDT 11:16

58 min Ancelotti goes again, bringing on the extremely exciting Anthony Gordon for Doucoure, and also sending on Delph for Sigurdsson.

11.15am EDT 11:15

57 min Digne crosses and Walker-Peters has both hands above his head, giving Everton a free-kick just outside the box, left-hand side. Sigurdsson decides to swing it out, but can’t avoid the first man.

11.14am EDT 11:14

56 min Whatever Ancelotti said at half-time, it hasn’t worked. Problem being, he’s not replete with options that might solve it. Two strikers would at least change things though.

11.12am EDT 11:12

52 min Godfrey chases Bertrnad into the box and Bertrand falls, but there’s not enough contact for either ref or VAR to award a penalty.

11.11am EDT 11:11

51 min “I HATE it when team turn out in totally unnecessary alternative strips,” emails Simon Gill. “Example 1: Everton today. Seafoam green and charcoal indeed. What would the likes of Shanks or Cloughie have had to say about that? Example 2: Wolves at Leeds the other day. The old gold and black is iconic; turning out in something like the castoffs from a Portugal training strip is not. Even if that is meant to be somehow referential, it still sucks.”

Tangentially, I used to like my team playing away to Southampton because we got to see the blue third kit RIP, of which I’m struggling to find a snap.

11.08am EDT 11:08

50 min On which point, Ralph Hasenhuttl very clearly knows some things. If I was a rich club contemplating a change of manager, he’d be near the top of my list, with Marco Rose and Julian Nagelsmann.

11.06am EDT 11:06

47 min “I’m not against sashes on kits,” says Chris Fowler, “and I like Rayo Vallecano’s model. But, although I know that in the early days Saints kit had a sash, I always prefer their kit, at least, to be red and white stripes. Like the good old days (the 1970s, when I first went to the Dell, for example), when the same strip was used season after season,

The stripes didn’t have to be necessarily all the same, mind you, and I really liked the kit when Keegan played for us at the beginning of the 1980s, with its wide 2 red and 1 white stripes with a black pinstripe between them. The two shades of blue away kit was a cracker, too.”

Yes, agreed on all counts. I remember a blue away kit a little later too, George Lawrence era, maybe worn in the 1986 cup semi against Liverpool.

Ah, here we go.

Photograph: Getty Images

Updated at 11.27am EDT

11.03am EDT 11:03

46 min We go again. Everton send Bernard on for Iwobi, but I’m not certain what that’s going to achieve – the problem seemed to be one of shape rather than personnel.

10.59am EDT 10:59

“Being at the top of the table this far into the season has been a dream,” says Mary Waltz. “Well it is quite obvious from this first half that it is still 2020, Trump is still President, and I am no longer dreaming and I am wide awake. My boys look like they have been reading their clippings and have been played off the field.”

Updated at 10.59am EDT

10.48am EDT 10:48

Half-time: Southampton 2-0 Everton

Southampton have been excellent, while Everton have been poor. I doubt things’ll proceed quite like that, so the second half should be decent.

10.47am EDT 10:47

45+1 min Godfrey, who’s had a stressful baptism, finds himself in space down the right and considers a cross, which ends up flying behind. Whoops.

10.46am EDT 10:46

44 min There’s not much rhythm to Everton’s play. I’m sure being without Richarlison is bothering them, but they’re also missing the width they get from Coleman down the right, and I wonder if changing to a diamond or a 4-4-2 would help them get into the game. Or maybe they might just play better.

10.45am EDT 10:45

43 min James finds Doucoure, and the ball ends up with Iwobi, but Ings is back by his own box to tackle. What a very very good player he is – you could tell when he was at Burnley in that first season they came back up, a one-man forward line and doing brilliantly in the bigger games. It didn’t work out at Liverpool, but right now he’d be a really good alternative to Firmino.

10.42am EDT 10:42

40 min Here come Southampton again, and Adams looks offside, but the flag stays down because this is now the procedure. Armstrong then drills home what looks like number three, but the flag is then raised. Southampton look dangerous every time they go forward, and though Everton look good for at least one, they’re struggling to create and still look likelier to concede.

10.40am EDT 10:40

37 min “It’s one of the better kits of the 2020 PL lot,” says Mike Hollitscher. “You take the River Plate/Rayo Vallecano sash and reverse the colours. I don’t get why some don’t seem to like it. Is it too Johnny Foreigner?”

I doubt it – the whole culture is influenced by fashion from elsewhere. I can only speak for myself, and say that on its own, it’s not bad even if it looks like they’re in a beauty pageant, but it’s not what I’d expect from a Southampton kit. And this Everton one, modelled by the HILARIOUS John Bailey, what a CHARACTER is also a jazzer.

Photograph: Colorsport/REX

10.37am EDT 10:37

GOAL! Southampton 2-0 Everton (Adams 35)

Danny Ings, the creator supreme! This time, he turns up on the left, bustling away from poor Godfrey and slapping over a low cross that falls nicely for Adams. He takes a touch, ponders the ultimate futility of existence, as the 35 defenders inside the box run about in circles, then cracks a low one past Pickford with the help of a slight deflection. I’m not sure that was in the corner.

Adams of Southampton scores his sides second goal. Photograph: James Marsh/BPI/REX/Shutterstock

Updated at 10.55am EDT

10.36am EDT 10:36

33 min “Jumping in on the kit chat,” says Barry Brian, “there are some disastrous kits this year (Chelsea’s blue and pink, Man United’s black and white, Inter home), but this Everton number certainly isn’t one of them. As for Southampton, I love a sash but fear we are in danger of overuse in recent years.”

I quite like the United one, though it reeks of people with attention-seeking facial hair and glasses – yes, I realise that these days, that narrows things down to about 42 percent of the world’s population – doing themselves mischiefs trying to design something “iconic”. As for this Everton one, it’s a nice colour, but very toothpaste.

10.33am EDT 10:33

31 min “It looks like whoever designed the kit has been watching the Canadian Premier League, says Kevin Smith, attaching a picture of Calgary’s Cavalry FC.

AP) Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP

Updated at 10.49am EDT

10.32am EDT 10:32

29 min Both sides are playing well, but Southampton have looked the incisive to this point, and ought really to have scored sooner. Everton need to get James on the ball and give Calvert-Lewin some decent service, or failing that, some service.

10.31am EDT 10:31

GOAL! Southampton 1-0 Everton (Ward-Prowse 27)

Twenty-four seconds later, poor Pickford is picking a pot of pickled peppers the ball out of his net, and what lovely reason he was given. Ward-Prowse finds Ings, who feeds him back in with a megs pass, and a deft first touch puts him in prime position to absolutely shmice a fine finish into the far bottom corner!

Ward-Prowse scores the opener for Southampton. Photograph: Andy Rain/Reuters

Updated at 10.53am EDT

10.29am EDT 10:29

26 min Nice from Southampton, Redmond again on the ball and sliding back and across for Romeu, tanking onto it … and he absolutely lamps it, a little flick off Keane forcing Pickford into a plunging save!

10.28am EDT 10:28

25 min “Everton’s kit is officially ‘seafoam green and charcoal’, by the way,” emails Andrew Goudie. That reminds me of the salmon and pink classic.

Photograph: Frank Tewksbury/ANL/Rex/Shutterstock

10.25am EDT 10:25

23 min Ings sticks one out wide to Bertrand, and another low cross finds Armstrong, but he’s kind of side-on to it so that when the ball arrives at speed he can’t quite resolve the conundrum of his feet, tentatively poking at a backheel that gets nowhere.

10.23am EDT 10:23

21 min How do we feel about this Southampton rig? Do they look like contestants in a beauty pageant?

Photograph: Tony McArdle/Everton FC/Getty Images

Updated at 10.30am EDT

10.21am EDT 10:21

19 min How! Again, Everton switch the ball left, this time to Sigurdsson, and he has a look the larrups a shot which looks to be flying over and plenty … until it dips mid-swerve and crack the crossbar!

10.20am EDT 10:20

17 min Redmond gets himself at Godfrey again, but this time opts to go inside. The attack continues, the ball comes back to him, and this time he sticks Betrand in behind yerman – he needs help from Doucoure, who I think is the midfielder on that side. This time, though, he escapes when Bertrand’s low cross goes into the side-netting.

10.18am EDT 10:18

16 min …James gets a decent connection and goes around the wall, but McCarthy waits for him, collecting the ball without needing to move. This is a good game so far.

10.17am EDT 10:17

15 min A foul on Calvert-Lewin gives Everton a free-kick 25 yards out, marginally right of centre. Sigurdsson fancies it, but not a chance James is stepping aside, armband or not…

10.14am EDT 10:14

13 min Everton are finding Iwobi constantly, and this time he comes in off the left and drags a shot towards the near post which is deflected just wide. The corner comes to nowt.