Everton failed to rack up a hat-trick of wins in a week against Brighton.
Vitalii Mykolenko opened the scoring in the seventh minute when his initial shot was parried by Bart Verbruggen but broke kindly for him on the rebound.
But the visitors drew level late in the second half as Kaoru Mitoma’s cross took a wicked deflection off Ashley Young to catch Jordan Pickford unawares.
Here were the key talking points from Goodison Park:
Stalemate reaction typifies Blues’ growth
Had Evertonians been offered five wins from seven games and a Carabao Cup quarter final at the start of this season, most would snap your hand off.
After consecutive seasons of sheer tumult, stability and signs of incremental progress were two things which the Goodison faithful craved above all others.
Yet the wider response to Saturday’s draw with Brighton shows how far Sean Dyche’s side have come since banishing a poor opening to this campaign.
The visitors enjoyed similar levels of dominance at the Grand Old Lady to January’s comprehensive 4-1 rout which marked a watershed moment.
Crucially, however, the Seagulls failed to lay a meaningful glove on the Blues until Kaoru Mitoma’s late cross met a fortuitous deflection by Ashley Young.
Dyche spent the season’s early weeks reviving decades-old statistics which threatened to see him go down in infamy in the annals of Goodison history.
That this stalemate is seen more as a missed opportunity than a hard-fought point shows how far the 52-year-old’s charges have come in such little time.
…but there’s still room for improvement
Criticisms can still be levelled at Dyche for this result, namely his changes.
The Everton manager stuck to his guns for the most part with a returning Ashley Young favoured to Nathan Patterson in the hosts’ starting line-up.
He also kept faith with Dominic Calvert-Lewin leading the line after the striker finally banished his longstanding injury problems barely two months ago.
Both, however, were decisions which ultimately came home to roost.
Young could do little about his own goal but the writing was on the wall for the majority of the game up against Mitoma and his fellow veteran James Milner.
As the 38-year-old and his teammates began to tire midway through the second half, Patterson’s fresh legs would have been a logical change-up.
Instead, the Scotland international was only introduced at the end of normal time, six minutes after Brighton had snatched a somewhat undue equaliser.
The substitution of Beto in place of Calvert-Lewin, similarly, arrived too late as Dyche again reverted to reactive changes instead of proactive solutions.
Gueye lays his Seagulls ghosts to rest
A calf injury ruled Amadou Onana out of his third game in six days as the burden of filling his midfield void fell to a much-maligned Idrissa Gueye.
The Senegalese enforcer’s second spell with Everton has been more miss than hit, with his outing against Brighton last January proving to be a nadir.
An errant back-pass which allowed Roberto De Zerbi’s side to cap off their emphatic rout left many fans questioning the merits of Gueye’s recent return.
Facing the same opponents, he picked up a booking on the stroke of half-time for fouling Adam Lallana that left him traversing the disciplinary tightrope.
But while pace now eludes the 34-year-old in his Goodison swansong, he still possesses an innate ability to read the game and snuff out potential danger.
Gueye’s guile produced a series of well-executed challenges that allowed Everton to largely withstand Brighton’s persistent second-half pressure.
He is still not without flaws but this display helped exorcise January’s ghosts.