Hammers dent Toffee's Champions League dream

Blues lucky to escape with a point after dissapointing performance.
Everton 1 (Yakubu)
West Ham United 1 (Ashton)
By Daniel Gregory 23/03/08

Everton suffered a blow to their Champions League ambitions after escaping with a point against a rejuvenated West Ham side.

Everton started well as they looked to get their recent results against Fiorentina and Fulham out of their system, and were ahead after seven minutes when the prolific Yakubu latched onto Victor Anichebe's flick on to hammer a thunderbolt past Hammer's keeper Robert Green.

Everton suffered a double blow later in the first period when Tim Cahill had to be replaced by Manuel Fernandes after suffering a re-currence of his troublesome foot injury, before Yakubu had what looked like a perfectly fine goal ruled out after the assistant referee raised his flag for offside.

West Ham began to grow in strength and spurned several chances before the break, with debutant centre back James Tomkins hitting the bar with a header, before Ashton failed to capitalise from a defensive mix up between Mikel Arteta and the out of sorts Phil Jagielka, pulling his half volley wide of the post.

West Ham continued to dominate after the break and were finally rewarded when Ashton managed to steer Freddy Ljungberg's whipped cross past Tim Howard, who managed to get a hand to the effort but failed to stop the ball hitting the post and going in.

Alan Curbishley introduced youngster Freddy Sears for the last 20 minutes and the youngster made an instant impact, running at a suprisingly lacklustre Everton defence and causing problems for Jagielka on a number of occasions, who made two catastrophic errors to let the youngster in, only for him to be foiled by the out-rushing Howard before being denied by the post.

The two dropped points put a severe dent in Everton's Champions League aspirations, and the Blues will almost certainly need to beat Liverpool at Anfield next week to stay in the hunt.

Boss David Moyes said: "It leaves us in fifth place which is a good position to be in and we have gained a point on the sides below us. Yak scored what looked like a good goal and Victor had a chance through one-on-one.

"I could have done with freshening things up in the second half but we didn't have any forward players to put on. Are injuries worrying me? A little bit, but I am more bothered about the players that are fit.

"We will gather our thoughts, get the players back ready and look forward to the game. All Merseyside derbies are always keenly contested and I am sure this one will be as well."

When asked about the injury to Tim Cahill, Moyes said: "He had a foot injury before the game and I think that is the problem again but we will know more later."

EVERTON: Howard (9) Neville (6) Jagielka (4) Lescott (6) Baines (6) Cahill (5) Arteta (5) Osman (6) Carsley (6) Yakubu (7) Anichebe (6) Subs: Fernandes (6) Subs not used: Wessels, Hibbert, Valente, Gravesen.

Man of the match: Tim Howard