Everton Secure Opening-Day Victory Over Crystal Palace
Everton have spent a year trying to turn Hill Dickinson Stadium into a home. On Saturday, it finally sounded like one.
David Moyes’ side survived an early barrage, rode their luck against the woodwork and then punished Crystal Palace to claim a 2-0 win – their first victory on the opening weekend of a Premier League season in five years, and their first league success in eight matches.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Thierno Barry delivered the goals, but this was as much about resilience as it was about quality. For Moyes, it felt like the beginning of something. For Pierre Sage, it was a brutal welcome to England.
Palace threaten, Everton strike
Palace arrived on Merseyside already handicapped. Ismaila Sarr, last season’s 21-goal top scorer and the spearhead of their Conference League triumph, did not even travel. With talk of a move to Galatasaray swirling, Sage left him out of the squad.
Within four minutes, the absence bit hard.
Eddie Nketiah pounced on a weak defensive header from James Tarkowski and slipped the ball into Jean-Philippe Mateta. From inside the area, with Jordan Pickford exposed, Mateta lashed over. A huge chance wasted, and a warning Everton did not heed immediately.
Palace kept coming. Nketiah and Mateta both rattled the frame of the goal before half-time, Sage staring on in disbelief as his forwards did everything but score. Pickford threw in two sharp saves to keep the scores level, and the new season at Hill Dickinson started to feel eerily like the old one: edgy, anxious, fragile.
Then the mood flipped.
Eight minutes after that early scare, Everton fashioned their first clear opening. Dewsbury-Hall slid a clever pass into makeshift right-back Merlin Röhl, pushed into unfamiliar territory because Moyes still has no natural option in the position. Röhl cut the ball back for Iliman Ndiaye, whose shot went straight at Dean Henderson. It was a let-off for Palace, but it hinted at a route Everton could exploit.
The pressure finally told three minutes before the interval. Dewsbury-Hall, already knitting Everton’s play together, found space on the edge of the box and whipped a precise low strike into the far corner. Henderson had no chance. After all Palace’s early menace, it was Everton who walked down the tunnel with the lead and the noise of a relieved home crowd ringing in their ears.
Barry doubles up, Palace unravel
Any hope of a Palace response after the break vanished almost as soon as the second half began.
Eight minutes into it, Ndiaye produced the kind of delivery every forward dreams about – vicious, bending, begging to be attacked. Barry obliged, darting into the six-yard box and thumping a close-range header past Henderson. Two chances, two goals for Everton. Palace’s earlier profligacy suddenly looked even more costly.
From there, the contest sagged for the visitors and hardened for the hosts. Everton, buoyed by the cushion, started to look like a side that understood their new surroundings. The nervousness that dogged their first campaign at Hill Dickinson, when they won only six of 19 home league games, eased with every completed pass and every tackle roared by the stands.
Midway through the half, Palace’s day darkened further. Defender Chadi Riad went down in clear distress and was carried off on a stretcher, appearing to suffer a serious knee injury. Sage, already short of his main attacking weapon, watched another key piece disappear down the tunnel.
Palace pushed when they could, but the belief seemed to drain away. The post, which had denied them twice in the first half, stood as a cruel symbol of their afternoon.
Moyes’ new house starts to feel lived in
On the eve of the season, Moyes likened Everton’s first year at Hill Dickinson to moving into a new house with only the wallpaper up – impressive to look at, but not yet lived in. Against Palace, the place finally felt furnished.
Dewsbury-Hall ran the game with authority, knitting midfield and attack, scoring one and helping create the platform for the second. Pickford’s big saves in that chaotic first half underpinned everything. Röhl coped admirably out of position. And Barry, with his instinctive header, gave Everton the kind of ruthless edge they lacked so often last season.
It was not flawless. The lack of a natural right-back remains an obvious gap, and Everton’s defence looked vulnerable whenever Nketiah and Mateta isolated their markers early on. But as the final whistle went, the mood around the ground had shifted. Optimism, not apprehension, carried the day.
With a couple of smart additions before the transfer window closes, this version of Moyes’ Everton might yet turn Hill Dickinson into a fortress rather than a showpiece.
Sage’s harsh lesson and Palace’s looming transition
For Sage, this was a harsh introduction to Premier League management. He arrived with the glow of last season’s impressive Ligue 1 campaign with RC Lens, but the margins in England cut him quickly.
On another afternoon, with Sarr on the pitch and the post an inch kinder, Palace could easily have been the side dancing back to the dressing room. Instead, Sage became the 15th manager to lose his first Premier League match in charge of Crystal Palace.
The context around the club offers little comfort. Palace have ridden an extraordinary high over the last 12 months, lifting three trophies, including the FA Cup. Yet even the most optimistic supporters knew a reset was coming once Oliver Glasner departed.
Maxence Lacroix has already gone. Sarr may follow before the window shuts. Riad’s injury threatens to thin the squad further. Replicating the success of 2025 and 2026 will be a monumental task.
Everton, meanwhile, walk away from opening day with something they have not felt in a long time: a sense that the season might finally be moving with them, not against them.
