Everton 2-0 Crystal Palace: Palace hit the woodwork twice, Everton hit the net twice

Some 2-0s are comfortable. This one was not. Crystal Palace were the better side at the Hill Dickinson Stadium for long stretches and lost anyway, which is a very Premier League way to begin a season.

Eddie Nketiah curled one against the post after a fine Jordan Pickford save. Jean-Philippe Mateta, played clean through, hit the woodwork too. Palace finished with four big chances created and an expected goals figure of 2.04 — nearly double Everton's.

Everton finished with two goals. That is the whole match in one sentence.

Two moments, taken properly

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall broke the deadlock just before half-time, a thunderous strike into the top-right corner that gave the goalkeeper no say in it at all.

Eight minutes into the second half, Iliman Ndiaye delivered from the right and Thierno Barry headed the second. David Moyes's side had taken their two clear openings and were never required to create a third.

It is Everton's first opening-weekend win in five years. It is also a losing debut for Pierre Sage as Crystal Palace manager, on an afternoon where almost everything except the scoreline went his way.

Match facts

• 42' — Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (Everton)
• 53' — Thierno Barry (Everton), assisted by Ndiaye
• Palace hit the post twice: Nketiah and Mateta
• Big chances created: Crystal Palace 4, Everton 1

How it unfolded

Palace controlled the first half without ever leading it. Nketiah's curler was the best move of the game and Pickford turned it onto the post. Mateta's miss, one-on-one, is the kind that gets replayed all week.

Everton absorbed it, then landed two clean punches either side of the interval. Fifteen fouls to five tells you how ragged Palace became once they went behind — and they still could not force Pickford into the save that mattered.

What's next

Everton go to AFC Bournemouth on Saturday 29 August looking to make this a proper start rather than a stolen one. Crystal Palace host Manchester City on Friday 28 August — a brutal draw for a side that will spend the week being told how well it played.

Where the four games since have taken them

This was matchweek one, and both sides have since played four more. Everton never lost again in that stretch but never quite won again either, stringing together three straight draws before finally beating Ipswich Town. Crystal Palace's run was the opposite kind of streaky — a heavy defeat, an away win, another defeat and a goalless draw.

Add it all up and Everton are unbeaten through five matchweeks — two wins, three draws, no defeats — level on nine points with Brentford, Leeds United and Liverpool, who occupy 4th, 5th and 6th above them; only goal difference keeps David Moyes's side outside the Champions League places at 7th. Six goals scored and three conceded in five games is a defensive record built on exactly the kind of night this one was: Pickford's saves turning a game Palace dominated into two points, then three, then more. Crystal Palace have gone the other way: one win, one draw and three losses since, 15th on four points with six goals scored and eleven conceded, a table position their finishing on this opening afternoon did nothing to prevent. Pierre Sage's first game in charge — the post-hitting, the 2.04 xG, the 58% of the ball — turned out to be a preview of a wider problem: chances created without the ruthlessness to turn them into points.