Everton Start Fast with 2-0 Win Against Crystal Palace
Everton have spent years stumbling out of the blocks. Not this time.
David Moyes’ side rode out an early storm, punished Crystal Palace at key moments and walked away from Hill Dickinson Stadium with a 2-0 win – their first opening-day Premier League victory in five years and their first league success in eight matches.
For a club that has spent the past year trying to work out its new home, this felt different. It felt like a team beginning to belong.
Palace waste chances, Everton strike
Before the game had even settled, Everton were hanging on.
With less than four minutes gone, a loose defensive header from James Tarkowski dropped invitingly for Eddie Nketiah. He pounced, slipped the ball into Jean-Philippe Mateta, and the forward, unmarked inside the area, lashed over. A glaring chance. A warning.
Crystal Palace arrived on Merseyside already handicapped. Last season’s top scorer Ismaila Sarr, the man who hit 21 goals across all competitions and helped deliver the Conference League, was left out of the travelling squad by new manager Pierre Sage amid ongoing links to Galatasaray. His absence loomed large almost immediately.
Everton, short of a natural right-back and still searching for balance, needed something to settle them. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall provided it. Eight minutes after Palace’s early miss, he threaded a clever ball into makeshift full-back Merlin Rohl, whose cut-back found Iliman Ndiaye. The forward’s low effort was straight at Dean Henderson, but the move hinted at a route into the game.
The pressure kept swinging back towards Everton’s goal. Nketiah and Mateta both rattled the woodwork, leaving Sage staring at the touchline in disbelief. For a manager who had guided RC Lens so impressively in Ligue 1, this was a brutal introduction to the Premier League’s thin margins.
Then the punishment came.
Three minutes before half-time, Dewsbury-Hall seized his moment. Finding space on the edge of the box, he arrowed a crisp strike into the far corner, beyond Henderson’s reach. Against the run of Palace’s chances, Everton led. The stadium, edgy for much of the half, finally exhaled.
Barry’s header and Pickford’s defiance
Any fears that Everton would retreat after the break were quickly dismissed.
Eight minutes into the second half, Ndiaye delivered a wicked cross from the left. Thierno Barry attacked it, timing his run perfectly to head in from close range. Two shots of real quality, two goals. Palace, who had already hit the post twice, now had a mountain to climb.
Jordan Pickford made sure they never got close to the summit. The Everton goalkeeper produced a couple of outstanding saves in that fraught first period, interventions that kept the scoreline level long enough for Dewsbury-Hall and Barry to tilt the game.
For Palace, the afternoon darkened further. Midway through the second half, defender Chadi Riad was carried off on a stretcher after appearing to suffer a serious knee injury. A grim sight on a day that had already turned sour.
By the final whistle, the story was written in the details: Everton ruthless when it mattered; Palace left counting the cost of missed chances, an absent star and an injured defender.
A new house starts to feel like home
Moyes had described Everton’s first season at Hill Dickinson Stadium as like moving into a new house with only the wallpaper up. The setting was impressive, the view over the River Mersey spectacular, but the team never truly settled – just six wins from 19 home league games last term told that story.
This performance did not erase those struggles, but it shifted the mood. The win, the clean sheet, the resilience under pressure – it all fed into the sense that this new ground might finally be turning into a genuine home.
Everton still look a player or two short, especially at right-back, and Moyes has been open about wanting reinforcements before the window closes. Yet as fans drifted out into the Merseyside evening, there was a rare combination of optimism and excitement about what this season might hold if those additions arrive.
Sage’s harsh welcome and Palace’s looming transition
On the opposite touchline, Sage cut a deflated figure as his players and staff trudged off. For all his success in France, this was the Premier League at its most unforgiving: two shots against the post, a dominant early spell, no goals, and a 2-0 defeat.
On another day, with Sarr on the pitch and one of those efforts bending inside the post rather than crashing against it, Palace might have been the ones dancing back to the dressing room. Instead, they were left to dwell on what-ifs and what comes next.
The context matters. Palace have just come off a remarkable 12 months, lifting three trophies, including the FA Cup. But everyone around the club knew a reset was coming after Oliver Glasner’s departure. Maxence Lacroix has gone, Sarr may yet follow before the window shuts, and a new manager is trying to impose his ideas in the most demanding league in the world.
Replicating the glory of 2025 and 2026 will be a formidable task.
For Everton, though, the question is different. After years of stumbling starts and nervous home crowds, has this finally been the day when Hill Dickinson Stadium stopped feeling like a showpiece and started feeling like a fortress?
