ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE Everton 1 Manchester City 0:IT WAS a night when one man brought handcuffs and Manchester City played as though in a straightjacket. They will go into February top of the league, encouraged by the fact that the last eight titles have been won by the team leading the way at this stage, but this was a dishevelled performance on a peculiar evening that will otherwise be remembered for a pitch invader handcuffing himself to the goalposts.

Never before has a Premier League match been interrupted by a middle-aged man protesting about Ryanair’s recruitment policies on the basis that his daughter did not get a job with the airline. It was a surreal subplot to a match in which City rarely looked like a team at the top of the league, losing to Darron Gibson’s first goal for Everton since signing from Manchester United.

The play was suspended for four minutes, which was probably as about as quickly as anyone could have imagined during those moments when a dozen or so stewards and police officers were in the goalmouth trying to work out a way to release him. Eventually a member of groundstaff produced some bolt-cutters and the intruder was cut free and escorted from the ground, presumably to be placed in a second pair of handcuffs.

At that point we had seen only flashes of the stylish, attacking brand of football that has been associated with Roberto Mancini’s team this season. Samir Nasri had thumped a 30-yard effort against the joint of post and crossbar and an exquisite pass from David Silva had set up Micah Richards, overlapping from right-back, for a chance that Tim Howard kept out at his near post.

Yet City were not able to demonstrate the gulf between the two sides on a night that began with a distinct look of vulnerability about the side David Moyes put out. Everton have legitimate reasons for being willing to move on the erratic and often injured Louis Saha, a striker who has not scored in his last 942 minutes of league football, but the statistics show no other player at Goodison has recorded more shots, both on and off target, this season.

Nikica Jelavic, the new €7 million recruit from Rangers, was not signed in time to play and it is a probably a measure of Everton’s limited means that Moyes’s six outfield substitutes had an average age below 20.

Moyes also had an emergency centre-half partnership of Tony Hibbert and John Heitinga in operation because of the injuries to Phil Jagielka and Sylvain Distin. Hibbert was giving away about six inches to Edin Dzeko and it was peculiar they did not do more to exploit this.

The league leaders produced the more cohesive football in the opening 45 minutes, working those elaborate patterns between Silva, Nasri and Sergio Aguero and more comfortable in possession. They could easily have been behind, however, after five minutes when it needed Joleon Lescott, returning to his former club, to prevent Denis Stracqualursi’s downward header opening the scoring from Royston Drenthe’s corner. The striker vociferously protested that the ball had crossed the line but replays confirmed Lescott, with a stooping header, had produced a brilliant piece of defending.

That apart, Everton threatened only intermittently. Yet City were poor at times, unimaginative and strangely subdued. Gareth Barry was unusually careless and the home side had looked fairly comfortable considering the experimental nature of their defence.

It was strange to see City playing with so little drive and, after 59 minutes, Landon Donovan laid the ball into Gibson’s path 20 yards from goal. The former Old Trafford midfielder has always had a fierce shot and this one took a decisive flick off Vincent Kompany to fly past Hart.

There was an improvement from City after that and they started to play with the kind of urgency that might have been expected earlier but Everton seemed invigorated by the goal and, once again, played with the stubbornness that has made them the nearest thing to City’s bogey team in recent years.

Guardian Service

EVERTON: Howard, Neville, Hibbert, Heitinga, Baines, Donovan, Gibson, Fellaini, Drenthe (Baxter 78), Cahill, Stracqualursi (Vellios 88). Subs not used: Mucha, Gueye, Barkley, Forshaw, Duffy. Booked: Drenthe.

MANCHESTER CITY: Hart, Richards, Kompany, Lescott (Kolarov 68), Clichy, Barry (De Jong 86), Milner (Johnson 62), Silva, Aguero, Nasri, Dzeko. Subs not used: Pantilimon, Zabaleta, Savic, Razak. Booked: Kompany, Lescott.

Referee: Peter Walton(Northamptonshire).