Briefly and improbably, Everton are top of the
Premier League. They got there not by clerical error or through a sudden and unexplained vaporisation of all the teams beginning with letters from A to D, but by winning their third game in a row: a greasy, hard-fought, relentlessly entertaining arm wrestle at a drenched and freezing Selhurst Park.
They were the better team, the more ambitious team, the more attractive team, and yet they still largely owed their win to the butterfly wings of VAR: Richarlison’s first-half penalty being awarded for a painfully harsh handball against Joel Ward.