A much-improved Everton team upset Premier League leaders Arsenal at a boisterous Goodison Park, giving new manager Sean Dyche a fantastic start of 1-0 win.
Frank Lampard left after being fired with the squad in the relegation zone, and Dyche was hired the following Monday.
And the hosts won for the first time in 11 games in all competitions thanks to a connection between two players who previously played for Dyche at Burnley.
Centre-half In response to a corner from Dwight McNeil, James Tarkowski leapt at the far post and headed the ball in, setting off the kind of joyful celebrations that have been uncommon at Goodison this season.
Everton had enjoyed much the better chances in the opening period too, but striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin could not convert from the excellent Amadou Onana’s low cross and also flicked a header wide.
Arsenal were outfought for large periods and failed to find any rhythm, although January signing Leandro Trossard forced Jordan Pickford into a sharp save late on.
The Gunners were unable to find the leveller and will see their lead at the top cut to two points if champions Manchester City beat Tottenham on Sunday.
Reflecting on today’s lost, Arteta said Arsenal “need to digest this one because it is important to digest, look in the mirror and on Monday come to the training ground ready for a fight because Brentford will be tough.
“Now is a time to love the players more than the day before and the month before, because they fully deserve it. We will be next to them and prepare for Saturday.”
As well as missed chances proving costly, Mikel was also left frustrated at how many dead ball opportunities we handed a side who thrive on those scenarios, as well as our reaction to going behind.
However he is already planning on working on both of those things as he aims to get back on track in our next league fixture.
“The reality is that we should have done more to win the game,” he said. “We put ourselves in many situations and we had to defend so many set pieces, and against this team it is a very difficult thing to do.
“Then in terms of our possession, we opened them up in many, many situations and we got into the final third in great positions and we didn’t finish well enough.
“They work on [set pieces] every single day and are really good at it. We have experience with Burnley in that type of situation and we have to prevent that happening, and we have to do the basics in defending really well against this team and we came up short in that.
“We still had a lot of time to react to that and we generated some situations but especially in the last 15 minutes, emotionally we didn’t manage the game well enough. We conceded too many free-kicks that stopped the game every 30-40 seconds and we couldn’t get back into the game.
“In the end, it is about the last 20 minutes and what do you do? There I think we lacked something to win like we won a lot of games this season, but we’ll work on that.”
