Everton boss Roberto Martinez was impressed with how his side recovered to draw 1-1 with Manchester City after four successive Premier League defeats.
Premier League champions City went ahead at Goodison Park in the 74th minute through a Fernandinho header, though Steven Naismith earned the Toffees a draw with an equaliser four minutes later to end their losing streak in the league.
Martinez believes his side showed character to come from behind and claim a share of the spoils against Manuel Pellegrini's side, and can build on the result to improve on their position of 12th in the table.
"I thought it was a bit of an old-fashioned game; a lot of character and grit in difficult conditions," he said.
"The first half we allowed City to have a little bit too much space even though we defended the area well and we stopped them being effective in the areas where David Silva and Samir Nasri operate.
"This City side are playing with a lot of confidence and they drag you out of position and play with good awareness of space.
"We came up with the best chance of the game with Joe Hart producing the save of the game [from Romelu Lukaku] and then we hit the crossbar [from Seamus Coleman's rebound effort].
"Once Man City scored I thought we upped the tempo, I thought physically we looked really strong and we always looked threatening but defended very well.
"I thought the reaction and character we showed after going 1-0 down was special. We would have loved to get the three points but it was a positive performance from our point of view."
Information from the Press Association was used in this report.