Palace had their best xG in a Premier League game without scoring since 2018, and lost 2-0 at Everton

Crystal Palace played well enough at Hill Dickinson Stadium on Saturday to have taken something out of it. Eddie Nketiah forced a save out of Jordan Pickford that most goalkeepers do not make. Jean-Philippe Mateta hit the post. By the end Palace had run up 2.04 expected goals, their highest in a Premier League match without scoring since December 2018, and they had lost 2-0.

Two goals of very different kinds

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall got the first three minutes before half-time, and got it from a place he had no business scoring from. He beat Chris Richards on the angle and found the far corner. Nineteen-year-old Harrison Armstrong had hustled the move into being.

The second was simpler and just as well made. Hayden Hackney took a free-kick quickly, which bought Iliman Ndiaye the room to cross, and Thierno Barry rose above everyone to head it in eight minutes into the second half. When Barry came off for Beto with under 15 minutes left, the stadium announcer read his name out and the ground got to its feet.

Ndiaye ran the game

Ndiaye was involved in almost everything Everton did in the final third all afternoon, and set up the second goal. It was a complete performance from a winger, and Everton got their afternoon out of it.

David Moyes was more measured about it. “Both teams had periods in the game,” he said. “Once we got the first goal, it settled us. They were great, I’m really pleased.” Everton have now won their opening game of a Premier League season for the first time since 2021.

Sage inherits a familiar problem

Pierre Sage was in the away dugout for his first Premier League match as Palace manager. He arrived at Selhurst Park in June from Lens, where he won the Coupe de France and finished second in Ligue 1 behind Paris Saint-Germain, and he did not sound like a man who thought his side had been outplayed. “The first half we play as we decided,” he said, before conceding that letting Everton score the second changed it: “we deserve to win the first half.”

He has a point about the first half. He also has a squad that created two goals’ worth of chances and scored none of them, which is the kind of afternoon that looks like bad luck once and a pattern by October. Oliver Glasner, the manager Sage replaced at Selhurst Park, spent his own opening day losing 1-0 at home to Leeds with Nottingham Forest. Neither man will want to hear much about xG this week.

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