Pickford's penalty antics put off Haaland before his big MISS for Man City

Jordan Pickford was up to his old tricks again at Manchester City as he pulled a string of offputting faces to distract Erling Haaland before the striker missed his penalty.

The home side, who came into the match having only won one Premier League match in their last eight while conceding a hatful of goals, released some pressure early in the contest after a deflected Bernardo Silva effort found the Everton net.

But City's now familiar struggles reared their head once more as Pep Guardiola's men struggled to create chances of note and the Toffees made them pay later in the half as Iliman Ndiaye stabbed home a wonderful effort to level things up.

Everton looked to have blown it, however, when Vitalii Mykolenko conceded a foul in his own area having horribly mistimed a challenge on Savinho just after the hour mark, leaving the referee with no choice but to point to the spot.

After a short build-up, Haaland stepped up to take the penalty, inhaling deeply before commencing his usual short, stuttery run-up.

Never one to shy away from the big occasion, Pickford followed up his antics by diving low to save the limp spot kick before Bernardo Silva dinked a ball back in, which Haaland nodded home.

But the goal was flagged offside, leaving the score at 1-1 and Everton managed to see out the remaining half an hour to secure a vital point at struggling City.

The Everton shotstopper had also done his homework with his signature cheat sheet affixed to a water bottle spotted on camera.

Ever the stickler for statistics, England's number one scanned the resource before he faced Haaland from the spot.

The bottle had detailed information listing each player's strongest foot, as well as the percentage of penalties they aim centrally, to the left, and to the right.

The combination of Pickford's distraction techniques and the pre-match prep caused Haaland to weakly strike his kick low to the centre-left of the goal and the Everton star to correctly guess the right direction.

The save kept the game's parity in tact and the away side even had a couple of chances to snatch all three points at the Etihad, wasting late counter-attacking opportunities.