AT HOME to the division’s basement team, on paper this was Everton’s easiest Premier League fixture of the season.

But as everyone knows, games are won and lost on the pitch not on paper.

That’s just as well for David Moyes’s side, because just one look at their horrific injury list this season would be enough to fool you into thinking that the campaign should be a write-off.

Everton’s Finch Farm must resemble a field hospital more than a training complex these days, and Moyes could be forgiven if he abandoned drilling his side at all between matches and ordered his stars to stay at home wrapped in cotton wool.

Yet there can be no escaping the dangers of actually taking to the field in Premier League combat itself. With trips to Newcastle possessing more stamps than philatelist French president Nicolas Sarkozy then the Goodison Park outfit are always going to run the risk of adding to their growing list of crocks.

While play-maker Mikel Arteta’s sickening injury was one of those blameless incidents that seemed so innocuous at the time, the sickening challenge by Kevin Nolan that looks like keeping Victor Anichebe on the sidelines for the season along with the Spaniard was inexcusable and looks worse with every viewing.

Nolan’s red card tackle at St James’ Park will go down as the most infamous moment from a match that for footballing reasons was unremarkable. But there was another ‘over the top’ challenge that went relatively unnoticed from fellow Merseysider Ryan Taylor which subsequently prevented Jack Rodwell from training last week and forced the teenager to sit out the Baggies’ visit on Saturday.

With such a series of setbacks to so many of their players, teams with lesser resolve would have cracked by now but, fortunately, Everton’s walking wounded have coped admirably throughout adversity to date and the nature of the Premier League table this term suggests that a third successive UEFA Cup qualification should be secured come May.

But it’s FA Cup glory these success-starved fans dream of the most.

They’ll be hoping that Middlesbrough peaked a week too early but even though the Teessiders’ quarter-final visit to Goodison Park was another two games away, the prevalent chant from the home support against Tony Mowbray’s side remained the defiant Cup anthem ‘We shall not be moved’.

Publicly Moyes maintains that doing well in their ‘bread and butter’ matches remains his priority but he nevertheless rested Joleon Lescott from this encounter in order to prevent the risk of the defender picking up a booking which would rule him out of the last eight tie against Gareth Southgate’s troops.

In doing so, the Birmingham-born defender missed out on his chance play in the most consecutive matches of any Everton player from signing for the club.