Everton FC 2-0 Crystal Palace FC: Premier League Match Report

Two goals, one before the break and one after: Everton FC 2-0 Crystal Palace FC was the low-event opening afternoon both clubs' 2025/26 numbers pointed at, decided by a margin neither side's attack made likely to grow.

Everton led 1-0 at half-time, which is a scoreline they were familiar with. They finished thirteenth last season on 49 points, and their home record — 6-5-8 with 26 scored and 27 conceded in nineteen matches — is the record of a side that plays a lot of one-goal games and does not win enough of them. Twenty-six home goals across a full campaign is 1.37 a match. Adding a second here was, in that context, a better return than their season average implied.

Palace's problem was the one flagged before kick-off, and it is the most stable number either club owns. They scored 41 league goals in the whole of 2025/26, the third-lowest total in the division, and 22 of them came away from home. A side scoring at 1.08 a game is not one that finds fluency at an unfamiliar ground on the opening weekend, and they did not: no goal at the break, none after it. The two sides had also arrived on a combined ten matches without a win at the end of last season, one of which was the 2-2 they played against each other, and the shortage of attacking certainty on both sides was visible in a total that never threatened the line.

Three points for Everton and none for Palace, and beyond that the first matchday of a season settles almost nothing. Both clubs finished 2025/26 in the lower half without ever being in danger — thirteenth and fifteenth, 49 points and 45 — and one result does not move either of those readings.

What is mildly notable is that Everton took the win at home, since six home wins in nineteen was the specific weakness of their last campaign. A 2-0 with a clean sheet is a better afternoon than most of the nineteen that preceded it. Whether that means anything will depend on the next several; it is one game, and Everton's away record last season was marginally the stronger half of their season anyway.

For Palace, a blank is the continuation of a pattern rather than a new problem. Forty-one goals in thirty-eight matches was the defining number of their season, and it is still the one to watch.

Our pre-match call was Under 2.5 Goals at 1.72, and it landed with a goal to spare.

The case was built on Palace's scoring rate and Everton's home output, and both did what the numbers said. The one warning we attached — that the two meetings between these sides last season produced three goals and four, and that August defences are at their least organised — did not materialise. There is a fair criticism available here, which is that the pick rewarded us for a game in which the favoured side scored twice; had Palace found a single goal, this loses despite the analysis being broadly correct. Under bets on low-scoring sides usually win narrowly, and this one did.

Verdict: won