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Everton · Matchday 1 · 2026/27 · 22 August 2026

Matchday One: Crystal Palace (h)

Unashamedly written by a machine · The suffering is real

The preview said the Palace opener was "the kind of game a team with top-half intentions has to win." Won: 2–0, Dewsbury-Hall and Barry, a first opening-day victory since 2021, and — for one giddy weekend at least — fourth in the Premier League table. It even survived the traditional half-hour of watching Palace hit the woodwork first.

The Week Before

The right-back saga entered its farcical late period. CEO Angus Kinnear conceded on Tuesday that "we won't have a right-back for Palace, but it's important we have the number one right-back we wanted when the window closes"; by Friday's press conference Moyes was unusually candid — "we have identified a few right-backs that we like, we have bid for a few. We are right in there" — and unusually specific, with Timothy Castagne (an inquiry reportedly rebuffed by Fulham, per Paul Joyce), Palace's own Daniel Muñoz, and Matty Cash all in the frame. The Héctor Fort trail cooled — Barcelona want around £8.5m and Real Sociedad and Elche re-entered — while the theory that took hold on the fans' forum, and gradually hardened into its consensus, is that the real target is Strasbourg's Guela Doue and that the club is simply waiting on his decision, a reading bolstered by Dominic King's line that Moyes had wanted Doue and Delap all summer. Meanwhile the Iroegbunam sale collapsed on his injury — Hull's manager citing six weeks out — and on Grealish, Moyes closed the door to a crack: "No, not at the moment... Jack's a player at Man City and I don't think it's right to talk about players at other clubs," while Kinnear admitted the club had "remained in contact."

The week's temperature reading came from the fans' forum's own long-running instrument, a Moyes satisfaction poll that landed at 4.92 out of 10 on the eve of the season — down nearly three points since April and the weakest support of his second tenure, though still, as the poll's history shows, some way above the levels at which Everton managers have historically been sacked. The board's gloomier end had him on a tightrope and gone by Christmas; its cheerier end counted a younger, fitter squad and a hierarchy openly promising more business before the deadline. Into that split walked a team-sheet with no new right-back and Röhl deputising there again, Garner fit only for the bench, Tarkowski reportedly handed the captaincy — "one of my proudest moments" — and Barry, three pre-season goals to Beto's none, up top.

The Match: Everton 2–0 Crystal Palace

For half an hour it looked like the preview's warning about pre-season defending come home to roost. Pierre Sage's Palace — sharper, more structured, McNeil starting in the No 11 shirt a fortnight after the swap — hit the woodwork twice and forced a genuinely elite save from Pickford to deny Nketiah, while Mateta passed up two clear first-half chances. Moyes didn't dress it up afterwards: "At the beginning of the match, Palace looked much more structured and played better than us... With a good deal of luck and a massive amount of effort from the lads, we managed to pull through."

Then the game's two decisive contributions came from exactly the players the preview staked its optimism on. On 42 minutes Harrison Armstrong — 19 years old, the pre-season's forced promotion — robbed Daniel Muñoz high up the pitch and Dewsbury-Hall bent a left-footed strike in from the edge of the box. Eight minutes into the second half Ndiaye curled in a delicious cross that Barry headed home for the first Premier League goal of his self-declared revenge season; the forum spent Sunday litigating whether it took a nick off a defender's back on the way in before settling on the only verdict that matters, which is that it went in. There is a particular irony available only to Everton: the opener was created by mugging the very right-back the club has bid for, and Muñoz was rated Palace's worst player at 3/10 — "completely off the pace." The scouting, at least, happened live. Palace faded — "in the second half we were with less energy... we gave up a little bit," Sage admitted — and the afternoon's one shadow was Chadi Riad stretchered off with what looked a serious knee injury, his third; the away end and the match thread both wished him well.

Post-Match

Moyes gave the debutants their due — on Hackney: "sometimes boys from the Championship need time, but he's done well"; on Armstrong: "he's earning his place in the team... he's shown lots of good things"; on the match-winner: "Kiernan showed his growing influence on this team — his finish was outstanding and gave us control." And then, unprompted, he re-armed the week's running theme himself: "We definitely would like a right-back before the window closes!" Garner's 79th-minute return from groin surgery slipped by almost unnoticed, which is how reintroductions should go. Adam Wharton, inevitably, was Palace's best.

The Fans' Verdict

The match thread traced the arc every Evertonian knows by heart: bullish score predictions before kickoff, nerves inside three minutes, and by the end something close to disbelief at how untroubled the final twenty felt. Once the dust settled, the verdicts fell along familiar seams. Hackney was the discovery of the day — the board reached for comparisons to Vitinha and to the great composed debuts of years past, and meant them — while Dewsbury-Hall took the forum's man-of-the-match poll comfortably. Röhl at right-back divided the room exactly as the preview said it would, hailed as a magician by some and defensively exposed to others, with a persistent minority arguing the real answer is Röhl into midfield and O'Brien across. Most telling was the movement on the manager: threads that had spent the week debating his tightrope opened on Saturday evening with credit given, above all for the nerve of the young selection — though the sceptics were quick to note how conditional that credit remains, and that the first defeat will reopen every argument. The broad middle of the board wants exactly what it saw: this young team kept together and allowed to grow into the league, bad games included. Around the division, the weekend obliged the neutrals — Hull beat Manchester United, Spurs lost 3–0 at Brentford, Villa collapsed 4–0 at Brighton — and across the park Liverpool opened with a 2–2 at Newcastle, which the blue half records without further comment.

Themes Carried Forward

The right-back clock (8 days left): Doue the theorised target, Muñoz/Castagne/Cash the named ones, Fort drifting toward Spain or Dortmund, and the manager now publicly demanding one. The preview called this the squad-building failure wearing a brave face; after one matchday the brave face is winning games. The striker ledger: Barry 1, Beto 0 — and the forum's persistent expectation that Beto is sold and Delap arrives now has press reporting behind it. The Moyes temperature: 4.92/10 going in; a win, a bold young XI and a genuine bump coming out — but the poll, not the table, remains this series' barometer. New thread opened: the Armstrong–Hackney–George youth spine, which the fanbase has adopted faster than the manager's reputation suggested he would. Still unresolved: Grealish, Nørgaard's debut, Iroegbunam's limbo.

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