Olivier Giroud spared Arsenal’s blushes with a 90th minute headed leveller, as Everton once again threw away what should have been a cruising victory for the second game running.

Much pre-match hype was made of the return of Arsenal’s German World Cup-winning duo of Mesut Ozil and Per Mertesacker — with Lukas Podolski not making the squad — but the amount of British talent on show from two of last season’s top five must have pleased grass-roots supporters.

No less than 10 of the starting 22 hailed from Britain, and that was without the injured pair of Everton’s Ross Barkley and Arsenal’s still recovering Theo Walcott.

And in the 19th minute Ireland’s Seamus Coleman opened the scoring, heading in Gareth Barry’s deep cross, with Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny only able to palm the ball into the roof of the net.

Arsenal struggled to get a hold on the game, and were further punished in the last minute of the half, when Everton’s record signing Romelu Lukaku expertly threaded the ball to Steven Naismith, who finished sweetly through the legs of Szczesny for his second goal of the campaign.

Giroud’s introduction at half time gave Arsenal added imtetus going forward and he tested the hosts’ keeper Tim Howard in the 69th minute after finding some space in the box, but he couldn’t beat the US man.

With Everton looking to run down the clock, Arsenal crucially made a breakthrough. 

Substitute Santi Carzola’s square ball across goal found Aaron Ramsey with a simple tap in, with just eight minutes left to find an equaliser.

And, with just seconds of normal time remaining, Nacho Monreal did well to keep a deep cross in play, before providing Giroud the perfect cross to head home, leaving Howard dumbfounded. 

Everton boss Roberto Martinez was understandably frustrated by, again, letting two points slip though his fingers in the final minutes, after conceding late on against Leicester last week. 

“We ran out of energy and it became a feeling of wanting the game to end,” said the Spaniard. “We are not that sort of side, that’s not the way we play.”

Arsenal, who last season lost all their away games to the top five, will surely go home the happiest team but Everton should take solace that for 80 minutes they were far superior to the team that beat them to fourth spot last season.