THE shrill peep of referee Phil Dowd’s final whistle has barely dispersed from the Goodison air when mayhem ensues.

Manchester City are not happy. Aleksandar Kolarov, having made a beeline towards Seamus Coleman and gone toe-to-toe with Tim Cahill, is being ushered away by City manager Roberto Mancini and his assistant David Platt.

Mancini, his flailing flamboyant hair exacerbating his emotions, then becomes involved in his own heated exchange with Phil Neville, who is being restrained by City coach Brian Kidd.

David Moyes, meanwhile, can be spotted watching on from the touchline, a small smile of satisfaction stretching across his face.

“I enjoyed it,” he says. “I enjoyed standing back and watching it all because at the end of the day your job is to fight in the 90 minutes.

“I just stood back, I didn’t really see what it was all about. But you have to do it during the game – after the game doesn’t matter.

"I was smiling because we won.”

Indeed. The fight before the fracas had ultimately been won by Moyes’s Everton side, who pulled themselves up off the canvas following a first-half battering to land yet another knockout punch on City on Saturday.

While Kolarov’s gripe that sparked the full-time fracas was ostensibly at Coleman falling too easily under his challenge late on, it more demonstrated the frustration at the way Everton’s pressure had exposed the soft underbelly that has forever undermined City.