Everton were held to a 1-1 draw against a high-flying Leicester City.
James Rodriguez opened the scoring on the half-hour mark with a 20-yard rocket after a failed clearance from Wesley Fofana broke for him.
But Youri Tielemans cancelled out the Colombian’s wonder strike with a drilled long-range effort in the second half that was helped on by Jordan Pickford.
The result leaves Carlo Ancelotti’s side sitting seventh in the Premier League table, just two points away from a Champions League qualification place.
Here were the key talking points from Goodison Park:
Pickford needs more than time out
The real winner of this stalemate was not even at Goodison to bask in it.
But Nick Pope already knows that his bid to become England’s automatic goalkeeper choice for Euro 2020 is already a foregone conclusion.
Jordan Pickford’s continued floundering at Everton has now conceded defeat to his Burnley counterpart, this time in front of a watching Gareth Southgate.
His 67th-minute howler gifted Leicester a previously inconceivable foothold back into the game, but the warning signs had been there long before that.
Pickford is perennially a game away from committing yet another blunder, and the timing of his latest one could not have possibly been any worse.
Carlo Ancelotti has admirably tried to preserve the 26-year-old’s dignity when he falters; usually by momentarily taking him out of the spotlight.
However it is more than just intermittent time-outs which Pickford requires to finally overcome confidence issues which have continued to blight the Blues.
Throwing him at the mercy of Newcastle, an opponent who always seem to successfully get into his psyche, on Saturday would be recipe for disaster.
Blues show some continental nous
Ancelotti certainly knows about what passes for European pedigree.
Anyone who spends the best part of two decades managing clubs in the Champions League and has won it three times is clearly an authority on it.
The Italian borrowed a page from his own playbook in efforts to push Everton back up the Premier League table and into that final qualification spot.
His players were forced to defend deep against an upwardly mobile Leicester City side with their own designs of again reaching the Champions League.
Without a deep-lying enforcer to soak up the pressure while the visitors began to run rampant through the middle of the park, they had little choice.
And until a borderline predictable error midway through the second half – more on that later – they succeeded in nullifying the Foxes’ counter-attacks.
Ancelotti believes that this week will offer a glimpse of Everton’s future. Halfway through, there are signs they have developed some continental nous.
Rodriguez takes the lead again
Twice in the space of four days, James Rodriguez has dazzled more than the beaming floodlights hanging from the rafters of Goodison Park itself.
The Colombian’s performance in last weekend’s FA Cup win over Sheffield Wednesday was a sample of what would follow against Leicester also.
When a low cross intended for Dominic Calvert-Lewin was cut out and then poorly cleared back into his path, Rodriguez required no further invitation.
A rasping 20-yard strike, crashing in off Kasper Schmeichel’s left-hand post, extended his goals from outside the box tally to 19 in Europe’s top five leagues.
More impressively, Rodriguez’s second long-range effort for Everton was also the first he has executed such a finish with his supposedly weaker right foot.
This was a moment of pure genius conjured out of practically nothing by that the 29-year-old, whose importance to Everton is rapidly intensifying.
…but supporting cast struggling
It is probably just as well that Rodriguez continued to excel while his equally formidable castmates were visibly below-par against Brendan Rodgers’ side.
Both Calvert-Lewin and Richarlison struggled to impose themselves on this encounter and, equally, spurned golden chances to snatch victory late on.
The England international’s last act before being replaced by Seamus Coleman was to glance a Lucas Digne cross wide of Leicester’s goal from close-range.
Richarlison fared little better with a towering header sailing over Schmeichel’s crossbar minutes earlier as he wrestle with a current four-game goal drought.
Calvert-Lewin’s return to scoring form last weekend, similarly, was followed by a barren outing where he found himself starved of service throughout.