Everton 2-0 Palace: Moyes wins, Sage's start goes sour

Everton beat Crystal Palace 2-0 at the Hill Dickinson Stadium in front of 51,820 supporters, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall scoring on 42 minutes and Barry heading in on 53. It is Everton's first opening-day victory in five years, and a bitter first outing for Pierre Sage in the Palace dugout.

The scoreline flatters. Palace won the expected-goals battle 2.04 to 1.16, hit the same post twice and ran into a top-class save from Jordan Pickford to deny Eddie Nketiah on 17 minutes. They left Liverpool with no points and a performance far better than the result.

How the goals came

• 42' Dewsbury-Hall: Harrison Armstrong wins the ball high off Daniel Muñoz, the midfielder cuts inside Chris Richards and picks out the top corner
• 53' Barry: a free kick taken short and quickly by Hayden Hackney, a measured cross from Ndiaye and a header
• Booking: Kamada (Palace) on 30
• xG: Palace 2.04 - Everton 1.16

There is a little-known name behind the opener. Harrison Armstrong, nineteen years old, pressed high and took the ball off Muñoz to set the move up. It was his first goal involvement in the Premier League in seventeen appearances, seven of them as a starter.

The second was pure street smarts: rather than wait for the wall to form, Hackney played the free kick short and within two seconds the ball was in the box. For Barry it was a ninth goal in the competition, six of them at home.

The sad image of the afternoon

Clearing a Mykolenko cross, Chadi Riad twisted his left knee and stayed down. He went off on a stretcher, in tears and with his shirt over his head, applauded by the whole ground. Takehiro Tomiyasu took his place on 72 minutes.

The blow hurts twice over because the defender had already lost around four hundred and thirty days to injury since joining the club. There is no official diagnosis yet: only what everyone saw on the grass.

Sage, a manager with a glittering recent CV

Palace announced Pierre Sage, forty-seven, on 15 June 2026 on a three-year contract. He arrived on the back of an extraordinary campaign at Lens: Ligue 1 Manager of the Year, the club's first ever Coupe de France and qualification for the Champions League. Before that he had managed Lyon between January 2024 and January 2025.

One statistic to frame his defeat: Palace have had sixteen managers in the Premier League and only two won their first game in charge, Alan Pardew in 2015 and Oliver Glasner in 2024. Sage did not join that list, but he did leave the impression that his team understood what he was asking for in the first half.

He put it that way himself: they played the way they had decided in the first half, but in the second they let their opponents score, and they have to be quicker in their game.

Moyes: the first goal settled us

The Scot, in his second spell at the club since January 2025, valued exactly that: once the first goal arrived the team settled, they managed the game well from there and they contained Palace really well.

He had specific praise for his two young midfielders. He said they were terrific, that he was delighted and that Harrison is earning his place in the side. That is no small detail: Moyes has made it clear this summer that he would have liked more signings, particularly up front, where Barry and Beto managed only eighteen goals between them last season.

Two squads heading in opposite directions

Everton made three permanent additions: Hayden Hackney from Middlesbrough for an initial £16.5m rising to around £25m, having been Championship Player of the Year; Tyrique George from Chelsea for more than £20m; and Merlin Röhl, whose loan was turned into a permanent deal and who filled the problem right-back slot.

Palace have gone the other way. They sold Maxence Lacroix to Chelsea for around £51m on a six-year contract, and in January 2026 they had already sent Marc Guehi to Manchester City for an initial £20m. Jaydee Canvot, signed from Toulouse in September 2025 as a long-term project, has had to accelerate his development. Sage warned before the season began that he expected one or two more signings.

One more name never made it onto the pitch: Ismaïla Sarr was left out amid talk of a transfer to Galatasaray.

The stadium and the context

The Hill Dickinson, at Bramley-Moore Dock, holds 52,888 and is no longer a novelty: its first competitive use came in February 2025 and last term was the first full season there. Everton finished thirteenth on 49 points with only six wins in nineteen home games, missing out on Europe after taking three of the last twenty-one points available.

Palace, for their part, finished fifteenth and go into their first ever Europa League campaign, a schedule that will demand far more of them than last year's placing suggests.

There was a touch of colour too: the prime minister, Andy Burnham, watched the game as an Everton season-ticket holder, on his first visit to the stadium since taking office, accompanied by his wife Marie-France van Heel and their daughter Rosie.

"Palace played better, had more shots and lost 2-0. The Premier League came back with a reminder that expected goals do not appear in the table."