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Everton 2 Crystal Palace 0: Toffees win with late goals

By Matt Townsend

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 21: Dominic Calvert-Lewin of Everton scores his team's first goal during the Premier League match between Everton FC and Crystal Palace at Goodison Park on October 21, 2018 in Liverpool, United Kingdom. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 21: Dominic Calvert-Lewin of Everton scores his team's first goal during the Premier League match between Everton FC and Crystal Palace at Goodison Park on October 21, 2018 in Liverpool, United Kingdom. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images) /
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Despite a laboured performance Everton finally managed to break down a stubborn Crystal Palace side at Goodison Park.

With the return of the Premier League Everton went into their first game after the international break needing a win against Crystal Palace to maintain their recent momentum.

And after a difficult and hard-fought match they did just that eventually winning this match 2-0.

After a fine win away at Leicester last time out the Toffees started well and made the running in the first moments of this match. The Blues were looking quite dangerous and passed the ball crisply in the opening minutes.

But the early goal didn’t come and Palace grew into the match denying Everton an opening goal with their organisation and defensive resilience.

They were also looking a threat on the break and as the frustration mounted for the Blues the quality of the home team’s football declined. In addition their physicality seemed to unnerve the Blues at times.

And apart from one chance for Gylfi Sigurdsson, Everton didn’t have any shots on target in the first half. So it was Palace who went in at the break the happier of the two sides.

So Everton needed to up their game in the second half. And they did look more urgent and determined to find a way through the Palace defence.

But Palace were increasingly confident and started creating chances themselves. They were also looking very dangerous at set-pieces as Everton’s familiar weakness there was exposed again several times.

Ominously Wilfried Zaha was coming more and more into the match too and that was worrying for the Blues.

In particular Zaha was causing Toffees right-back Seamus Coleman lots of problems with his pace, strength and trickery.

After another jinking run into the penalty area, Coleman stretched out a foot and clipped the Palace forward. Down he went and inevitably the referee pointed straight to the spot.

Up stepped Luka Milivojevic to take the spot-kick. He fired tamely down the middle allowing Jordan Pickford to stretch out his legs and save the penalty.

The game seemed to hinge on this moment and Everton responded upping the pace and intensity of their attacking play. Marco Silva also made the first of three crucial substitutions bringing on Cenk Tosun.

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But despite this there were still few clear-cut openings until Silva brought on Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Ademola Lookman. The two youngsters combined for the opening goal soon after coming on.

With the minutes ticking by Lookman produced a dinking cross from the left which Calvert-Lewin rose to head past Palace keeper Wayne Hennessey.

The Londoners pressed hard for a quick equaliser and were caught cold as Everton broke and Cenk Tosun went on to collect the ball and fire coolly under the Palace keeper for the vital second goal.

So in the end it was a valuable and hard-won three points for the Toffees to continue their winning run and keep the positive momentum going.