Dominic Calvert-Lewin scored his first goal of the season as Everton ended their run of three successive losses in the Premier League with a 3-0 win over Crystal Palace at Goodison Park.
After suffering a knee injury in training ahead of the season, Calvert-Lewin has finally come back to the Everton side, with the match against Palace being his fourth of the season. He scored Everton’s opener in the 11th minute, flicking the ball around Marc Guehi in the process. The English striker was given a standing ovation by the home crowd at Goodison when he was later substituted.
Anthony Gordon scored the home side’s second in the 63rd minute, firing home a rebound off of Vitaliy Mykolenko’s saved shot. The goal was called for offside, but VAR intervened, overturning the decision.
After coming on in the 73rd minute, it was substitute Dwight McNeil who rounded out the victory, slotting home after a clever one-two with Alex Iwobi.
The victory means that Frank Lampard’s side have climbed up to 11th in the league table with 13 points after 12 games, while Palace, who have a game in hand, have dropped to 12th on 13 points.
“It’s a great feeling to be back at Goodison,” said Calvert-Lewin after full-time.
“For the team and for myself to get the win today it went exactly how I hoped. It’s been a while, one I’ve been waiting for, one I’ve been looking forward to and I felt like myself today. It’s been a long time coming but great to get the result.”
England manager Gareth Southgate was also at Goodison, and with Calvert-Lewin making a late push to make the World Squad, it was important that he made an impression.
The striker added: “It’s every boy’s dream to go to the World Cup. I’ve been counting down the days to get back on the pitch and all I can do is play the best I can for Everton and score goals and see where that takes me. First and foremost it’s what I do here.”
Despite Palace being able to come from behind in all three of their Premier League victories this season, they struggled against Everton, whose pressing forced the visitors into mistakes at the back.
“It was a bad performance from us. I think we were second best in every department of the game and we saw a team who played with determination to win the game and we didn’t match that level. It was a bad team performance,” claimed manager Patrick Vieira.
“We have to understand that we weren’t the best team when we won our last game and we are not the lowest team when we lost today. We analysed the consistency that we need and we didn’t have that and we have to keep working. We didn’t help ourselves with a performance like that today.”
When asked about Palace’s poor record away from home, Vieira said: “It’s something we have to look at but again we aren’t going to throw everything away. It was a bad day today and we have to keep working hard.”
