Richarlison adds the defibrillation as Everton keep breathing.

With less than two minutes of the second half played Goodison Park began to shake and shudder. Only this was not out of a state of crazed anxiety, rather the rapid release from the shackles after eight months of collective torment. In a cloud of wild haze Richarlison dashes away, sliding and slapping the corner flag, after slipping his desperate Everton into a famous lead that would later transpire into a legendary win. One for the ages. One for the supporters. The defibrillation has arrived. Everton are still breathing.

The Toffees’ saunter across Stanley Park last Saturday saw Frank Lampard’s side plummet into the relegation zone for the first time since December 2019. How did it come to this? A question thrown with vicious consistency around the blue half of Merseyside since the turn of the year as that lingering lump in the throat arrived as they wrestled to hold back the tears. But after today’s courageous 1-0 win over Chelsea’s sherbet-clad contingent the bottled hope once slipped from the grasp had returned with delicious zest. Savour those sips, there’s more twists in this tale, more hearts to throb, more limbs to quiver.

At times football can be a carved ribbon of hypnotic perfection: swarming in with the body shots, taking your breath, making the pitch spin. Yet prior to this Sunday in the earliest day of May there was a striking sense of expectancy, of probability that if Everton ever took the lead then they would have to defend with every sinew burning under the intense brightness of Chelsea’s jersey. This is the other side of the sport: the brotherhood and the discipline. Defending for their lives and their pride, orchestrated through the wonderful Jordan Pickford, a season of bitter malaise had been briefly forgotten, abandoned at the sight of Lampard’s swirling gesticulation on the touchline.

But those vivid emotions show little contrast from the sensual, slinky champagne football witnessed regally and regularly just a few hundred yards away. Three points, however attained, will always usher us towards salvation. In an attritional opening half where Chelsea dominated the ball and swarmed the box there was always an extra blue shirt suppressing the imminent threat posed by Mason Mount. With the orb at his feet Mount can do special things: spot the run, thread the needle, deliver the catharsis. Here he was outnumbered, outmanoeuvred by the myriad bodies that suffocated him.

Dressed in the royal azure Everton have their own idolised star. At 21 years of age Anthony Gordon is very much a shooting flare of cherished potential and yet he looked as assured as any who took to the Goodison turf. With his silky touches and mesmerising turns Gordon was an instrumental thorn in Chelsea’s intentions. Upon returning to the grazed ground the hosts came frothing out of the traps, ripping and roaring beneath a grey north-westerly sky. As a unit they hunted for a yellow shirt, like a rapacious fork of lightning moving closer and closer.

In a flash Richarlison was onto Cesar Azpilicueta, robbing the ball before receiving it with an onrushing Edouard Mendy out arms stretched, eyes fixated as the Brazilian wins the battle of wits. Into the far corner it nestles to screams, screeches and sound. Such deafening, defining noise that keeps Everton alive. Like a man signalling an overhead chopper Richarlison collects a flare, waves it in his right hand before launching it high into the human vibrations.

And yet for Chelsea their issues lie less on the pitch, but in the circulating news away from it. A club besieged by their own whirlwind of barrage and uncertainty, there are problems that run deep in the upper echelons of Stamford Bridge. Caught in the media hurricane of it all, on this Bank Holiday Weekend it was the simple case of finding no way through an Everton backline that drew the iron curtain over Goodison Park. ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ metaphorically draped above for Thomas Tuchel’s XI to see as they stride into the opposition half with ease, only to discover that finding a way past the imperious Pickford proved an impossibility.

As the clock displayed the 59th minute Mount bounced a drilled half-volley of both of Pickford’s posts before England’s No. 1 sprung like a grasshopper to deny Azpilicueta astonishingly on the line after the scoreboard operator had already lost faith. One of the most remarkable saves of the Premier League season may prove one of the most pivotal. Chances to seal it. Chances to blow it. It was an afternoon for quiet rejoicing, with the flickering knowledge that this job is far from complete.

The situation has improved, but still it is grave. Two points adrift now of Leeds and Burnley with a game in hand that welcomes Crystal Palace to Merseyside, the brutal, nerve-shredding battle to avoid the Championship turns another page. As surprising as it may sound Everton have won four of their last five in the league at home. They are still fighting.

Despite the ominous reality that greets every Evertonian upon waking up there are enough sands in the hourglass to retain a top-flight status that has been longstanding since 1954. There is life in the Grand Old Lady still, it just needs to be loved regardless of fate.