Everton Triumphs Over Crystal Palace at Hill Dickinson Stadium
Andy Burnham took his place among the dignitaries at Hill Dickinson Stadium, eyes fixed on the pitch and on an Everton side stripped of the reinforcements the whole country had been debating. No new right-back. No new centre-forward. No safety net. They didn’t seem to need one.
Everton rode their luck, punished Crystal Palace’s wastefulness and walked away with a win that grew more emphatic as the afternoon wore on.
Palace waste chances, Everton smell blood
Pierre Sage arrived in the Premier League with fresh ideas, not a revolution. Palace’s shape looked familiar, their failings even more so. The cutting edge that often deserted them under Oliver Glasner went missing again, and this time it hurt.
The visitors carved Everton open three times before David Moyes’s team landed a meaningful blow. Three big chances. No goals.
The warning signs for Everton began almost immediately. With barely three minutes gone, new captain James Tarkowski misjudged a header and Eddie Nketiah pounced, streaking away down the left. His low ball into the box found Jean-Philippe Mateta arriving at the near post. It should have been 1-0. Instead, Mateta lashed his volley over from close range.
Palace came again. Adam Wharton, already the subject of firm interest from Manchester City and just as firmly declared “going nowhere” by Sage, picked up the ball and saw a gap. His pass over Merlin Röhl – pressed into service at right-back as Everton’s search for Seamus Coleman’s successor drags on – was exquisite, dropping perfectly for Nketiah inside the area. The forward had time, picked his spot, and still Jordan Pickford got there, flinging out a hand to tip the shot onto his left post.
That same upright came to Everton’s rescue once more. Wharton combined smartly with Dwight McNeil, back on familiar turf, and Nketiah, before Mateta found space in front of goal. At full stretch, the France international finally beat Pickford, only for the ball to crash against the woodwork again.
Three chances. Two off the post. One glaring miss. The sense around the ground was clear: Everton would not keep giving them these openings. And they didn’t.
Dewsbury-Hall lights up Hill Dickinson
Everton had started tentatively, but their summer signings soon began to knit things together. Hayden Hackney looked composed, Tyrique George was busy and direct on the left, and Röhl, out of position, refused to hide.
The hosts fashioned their first real opening when Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall slipped a clever pass into Röhl’s path. The young German cut the ball back for Iliman Ndiaye, who forced Dean Henderson into a sharp stop. After that, the game tightened. Everton probed without much incision, Palace sat compact, and the crowd waited for someone in blue to take control.
Dewsbury-Hall answered the call.
The midfielder suddenly burst into life, slaloming through challenges before his shot clattered into Chris Richards. Everton appealed for handball. Nothing doing. Palace tried to spring forward through Daniel Muñoz – a player firmly on Everton’s right-back radar – but Harrison Armstrong snapped into the challenge, robbed him, and the whole picture changed.
Muñoz was stranded upfield. Space opened where a full-back should have been. Armstrong spotted it and slid the ball into Dewsbury-Hall. One touch, then an angled, ruthless drive that screamed past Henderson and into the far corner. A first Premier League goal in Everton colours, and a first roar of the season that felt like a release.
From anxiety to authority in a few seconds.
Sage’s tough baptism worsens
Stung, Palace tried to respond. Muñoz almost atoned for his error when he ghosted ahead of George to meet a teasing cross from Daichi Kamada. Again, the move was neat. Again, the finish deserted them, the Colombian’s header drifting wide of the far post.
For Sage, this was a harsh introduction to English football’s top tier. His team had the better of the early exchanges, hit the same post twice and still went in behind. Then came another blow late on, with defender Chadi Riad forced off with what looked a serious injury, compounding an already bruising day.
Off the pitch, there had been disruption too. Palace publicly rejected claims before kick-off that Ismaïla Sarr had refused to play in an effort to force a move to Galatasaray, with Sage insisting the Senegal international missed out through injury. On the pitch, though, the early focus and fluency his side showed could not survive their own profligacy.
Everton, by contrast, grew stronger the longer the game went on, their new faces settling, their new leader Tarkowski recovering from his early mistake to marshal the defence with increasing calm. Dewsbury-Hall’s strike changed the mood inside Hill Dickinson Stadium. The second-half header from Thierno Barry, a forward under pressure with talk of another striker arriving before the deadline, settled it.
No right-back. No new centre-forward. No problem – for now. The transfer questions will not go away, but on this evidence, Moyes has a team willing to scrap, suffer and then strike.
