Lambert finds positives in goal drought Unhappy Everton fans have

This was a 90-minute demonstration of a fundamental truth of Premier League life: without a proper goalscorer, a team will find itself in relegation trouble.

Here were two sides, one that has not won at home since November and the other that has not won away since October, failing to produce the one thing that might have made a difference: goals.

They could have played until this time next week and still neither side would have found the net.

It helped the visitors that they had Jack Butland in goal. The three shots Southampton managed to put on target he handled with aplomb, his save from the lively Nathan Redmond a beauty. “He is unbelievable. He makes saves that I think, ‘Where has that one come from?’ That’s how rare it is. He is at the top of his game at the moment,” said his manager, Paul Lambert.

The player himself reckoned the obduracy he showed between the posts was infectious, adding that the spirit in the side had dramatically improved since Lambert took over. “A few months ago, we would have lost that,” he said.

But despite his excellence, you wonder how this Stoke team might have fared had their hosts had anyone who could convert a chance. Charlie Austin remains Southampas ton’s leading scorer and hasn’t played since December because of a hamstring issue. Manolo Gabbiadini has only just ended a run of 16 games without a goal, and Argentine Guido Carrillo has yet to score since arriving in January. Stoke’s roster is no more replete with scorers. When Saido Berahino is reckoned a plausible alternative, a manager must know he is not blessed with options.

Lambert, though, remains bullish. “If it was at any other point in the season that we had been beaten once in six, then I’d have snapped your hand off.”

The truth is, though, that both Southampton and Stoke are deep in the mire. Without anyone to score goals, the suspicion is that they will not be straying far from it for the rest of the season. It was only last month that Sam Allardyce was talking of building an Everton team to play at their new Bramley-moore Dock stadium, scheduled to open in 2022.

Even as those words filtered out, there were raised eyebrows among the club’s support. Allardyce may wish for his stay on Merseyside to become a long-term project; the fans have made clear that they think differently. He should see out the season, but that is likely to be it.

Everton fell to a sixth consecutive away defeat, the travelling support called for Allardyce to go. The team’s lack of ambition, and the manager’s baffling substitutions, had stretched their patience beyond breaking point.

Why had Allardyce brought on Wayne Rooney early in the second half to feature beside Gylfi Sigurdsson, having admitted in January the two could not play together? Why was Cenk Tosun, who scored the opener, withdrawn after Ashley Barnes had equalised? Why was Sigurdsson, their most creative threat, taken off once Chris Wood had put Burnley in front?

Allardyce’s attempts at explanation – that Tosun was tiring after seeing little match action since his £27million move from Besiktas, and that he wanted to freshen up