Everton's Young Midfield Shines in Season Opener
Everton didn’t just win a football match. They snapped a habit, rewrote an opening-day script that had turned into a yearly ordeal, and did it with a midfield that looked like the future.
A 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace launched their Premier League season, with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Thierno Barry striking either side of half-time to bury memories of last year’s seven-game winless finish. For the first time since August 2021, Everton started a league campaign with three points. No late escape talk, no early anxiety. Just a clean, sharp statement.
And they did it with one of the youngest XIs of David Moyes’ second spell at the club.
The average age of his starting lineup was 25 years and 308 days – only once has he gone younger since returning, in a 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest last December. This time, the freshness was impossible to miss. Harrison Armstrong, just 19 and straight from the academy, started. Hayden Hackney, 24 and newly arrived from Middlesbrough, anchored the middle.
Moyes loved what he saw.
“They were great, I’m really pleased,” he told Everton’s website. “Harrison is earning his place in the team. He’s got an opportunity here, where at other clubs he might not have. He’s shown lots of good things.
“With Hayden, sometimes boys from the Championship need time, but he’s done well. I have to give him praise for how quickly he’s picked things up.”
For all the control Everton eventually showed, the afternoon could easily have gone the other way.
Palace carved out the better chances in the first half. Eddie Nketiah went clean through, only for Jordan Pickford to get the faintest of touches and tip his effort onto the post. Jean-Philippe Mateta also hit the woodwork. The warning signs flashed; Everton wobbled.
“We could easily have been a couple of goals down – it was a worldie save and it could have gone the other way,” Moyes admitted. “Both teams had periods in the game.”
The pressure finally told, just not in the direction Palace expected.
Three minutes before the interval, Dewsbury-Hall stepped up and ripped a 42nd-minute strike past the Palace defence, the kind of goal that changes the temperature of a stadium. Goodison, tense and restless for so much of last season, suddenly felt lighter.
“Once we got the first goal, it settled us. That mattered,” Moyes said. “We had big moments; Kiernan’s goal was important.
“We managed the game well after that and contained Palace really well.”
Palace never quite recovered. The numbers tell a story of frustration for new boss Pierre Sage. His side finished with fewer shots than Everton – 11 to 16 – but won the expected goals battle by 2.04 to 1.16. They generated 1.65 xG in the first half alone. They had the platform to win it, and they let it slip.
Sage didn’t hide his irritation.
“We played in the right way to win in the first half, but not in the second,” he told Palace TV. “But when you play in this direction, you have to score.
“We missed two or three big opportunities, and we gave the goal to the opponent. That’s why the second half was difficult, with them getting the second goal too.
“Sometimes, you know, you do the job but you don’t get the salary at the end – and today it was like that.
“Sometimes you play very well and you can keep it on YouTube, and when you lose your finishing, you take the clip and you put it in the waste. That’s why a goal is very important.”
Barry’s second-half finish underlined that lesson. Everton, now settled and organised, punished Palace’s looseness and tightened their grip on the game. From there, they rarely looked in danger.
For Moyes, the significance goes beyond three points. A young side, a reshaped midfield, an opening-day win for the first time in five seasons – all of it feeds into a different mood around the club.
Next comes a midweek EFL Cup trip to Preston North End, then Bournemouth away in the league on Saturday. Palace, licking their wounds and wondering how they left Goodison empty-handed, must now prepare to host Manchester City on Friday.
Everton have spent too long glancing over their shoulders. If this new-look midfield keeps growing at this pace, how long before they start looking up instead?
