Ndiaye penalty steal a point against Arsenal
Iliman Ndiaye's penalty salvaged a point for Everton as it fought back to draw 1-1 with Arsenal in the Premier League and left Gunners boss Mikel Arteta fuming about the decision.
Perhaps with one eye on the first leg of its UEFA Champions League quarter-final tie against Real Madrid this week, Arsenal started without Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli, but the rotated visitors controlled the first half.
Playing as Arsenal's central striker, Leandro Trossard gave Mikel Arteta's visitors a deserved lead in the 34th minute.
After Raheem Sterling capitalised on Idrissa Gueye's wayward header and scampered upfield, Trossard received his pass, shifted the ball onto his left foot and drilled home.
Trossard went close to adding a second goal just before half-time, and Everton was booed off by its supporters after failing to lay a glove on Arsenal.
However, the game turned on an error from Myles Lewis Skelly just 47 seconds after the restart.
After being beaten by the bounce of the ball, he wrapped his arms around Jack Harrison then fell on to his opponent's calf inside the Arsenal area.
Ndiaye sent David Raya the wrong way from 12 yards, and Everton improved from there despite Arteta introducing his big-name attackers from the bench.
Martinelli drew a full-stretch save from Jordan Pickford late on and Mikel Merino sent a header wide, but neither team mounted a sustained push for a winner.
After watching his side struggle for clear-cut chances from that point on, Arteta lamented what he saw as a refereeing error.
"I am 100 per cent frustrated," Arteta said. "We were very much in control of the match.
"We were hoping in the second half to continue the domination but out of nothing the referee decides to give a penalty.
"I have seen it 15 times – in my opinion, it is never a penalty.
"They [Everton] are very good at what they do. We gave away so many silly fouls which led to set-pieces. They generated nothing at all."
Those comments were put to Everton boss David Moyes, who said: "I've watched it zero times so I couldn't tell you if it was a penalty or not because I've not seen it back.
"I've said to the players that the challenge we've got is to prove how we get on against the better teams.
"We are trying to play better, we didn't do that today, so we need to find a way we can do that. Moving forward, we are trying to find how to get better against better sides."
Arsenal did at least avoid any further injuries ahead of the Champions League quarter-final first leg against Real Madrid, having seen Gabriel Magalhaes ruled out for the remainder of the season earlier this week.
But that was little consolation for Arteta, who said: "That's all good, but we wanted the three points.
"You want everything the way you plan it. We did a lot of good things, managed to rest some players, but we wanted three points."
Arsenal is now 11 points behind runaway leader Liverpool, which visits Fulham on Monday (AEDT) and needs a maximum of 11 more points to win the title.
Everton moved above Tottenham Hotspur to go 14th on 35 points.
