Last night’s 5-4 win over Spurs secured Everton a second domestic cup quarter-final of the season and indicated that they might have turned a corner in their mentality.
The cup win came four days after Everton had come back twice to draw 3-3 with Manchester United in the Premier League.
This time the Blues went behind then took a 3-1 lead only to see it clawed back to 3-3, again were back in front and once more saw Spurs retrive the situation before the home team finally won it.
These two results back-to-back seem to indicate that the Toffees are truly starting to believe they can compete with the top teams in the country.
Too often in past seasons, the Blues have almost always failed at these sorts of hurdles. One example that comes to mind for me is the FA Cup semi-final in 2012.
I was at this match which was played at Wembley as Everton were facing their neighbours Liverpool for a place in the FA Cup final.
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At the time the Toffees were still regularly the best of the rest outside the top four but had consistently fallen short of breaking that glass ceiling after the one time they had managed it in 2005.
Manager David Moyes had a pretty poor derby record against our city rivals despite a few excellent wins at Goodison Park down the years.
On this afternoon with Wembley evenly divided blue and red, Everton grabbed a first-half lead after Nikica Jelavic took advantage of a defensive error.
But the Blues couldn’t capitalise on that lead sitting back to try and defend it in typical Moyes style and Liverpool came back to win 2-1. It was a classic example of how the Toffees always somehow came up short in big games.
The problem seemed to be that the team just didn’t feel they could find a way to win these matches. While Everton have fielded plenty of rubbish teams over the last two decades or so, there always seemed to be a chronic lack of self-belief too even when they had a decent side.
Well now whisper it, but just maybe the Toffees have found the mentality to come through those games and take that next step to winnning trophies again at long last.
Since Carlo Ancelotti came in as manager there has been a rise in the expectations of the fans and performance of the team as the Italian has gradually remolded the side and demanded muh more from them.
Just before the match last night Ancelotti had underlined how important this moment was in the season and the question was whether his players had the stomach and the mindset to win this sort of game. Those players have answered him emphatically.
Two games don’t yet make a season and there are other big tests to come, but both of these past matches were examinations Everton would almost certainly have failed before.