Everton 3 Burnley 0: Blues comfortably beat Clarets in Carabao Cup
On an emotional night at Goodison Park, Everton ultimately defeated Burnley easily enough to progress to the Carabao Cup quarter-finals.
This was a good result that built on last weekend’s win at West Ham, something I had certainly wanted, as the Toffees secured only their second win at the Grand Old Lady.
The evening began with some moving tributes to former Everton chairman Bill Kenwright as his family, the club and supporters all paid tribute to him.
Owner Farhad Moshiri also put an appearance his first for two years and potentially his last too if the sale of the club to 777 Partners goes ahead.
A little surprisingly to me, Sean Dyche decided to continue with Dominic Calvert-Lewin leading the line against his former club, rather than giving Beto a chance from the start.
Calvert-Lewin was part of a strong line-up with pretty much every player a regular starter in the Premier League.
The only changes from the West Ham win were Ashley Young who came in for Nathan Patterson at right-back and Arnaut Danjuma replacing Abdoulaye Doucoure.
Everton got a good start and took an early lead through another ex-Claret James Tarkowski who headed in against his previous employer after thirteen minutes.
But despite falling behind the visitors came back into the game and made a match if it for a while although they didn’t really trouble Jordan Pickford in the Blues goal.
After the break and following improvement in performance, Dyche made some changes with Calvert-Lewin going off to be replaced by Beto and Danjuma, who had done little to impress on his chance to try and force his way into the manager’s thinking.
Another player who also came off later on was Amadou Onana who had added a second after a much more impressive second half display from the hosts.
Late on with just a few minutes remaining, an unlikely scorer Ashley Young, after an assist from Beto, added the coup-de-grace to complete a job well done.
So, as I had hoped a strong all-round effort, a good win, three more goals scored and none conceded again (a particularly inportant trend) and further positive momentum gained.