Everton FC 2-2 Manchester United FC: Premier League Match Report, 6 September 2026

Four goals, none of them before the interval: Everton FC 2-2 Manchester United FC. Half-time was 0-0 and the record stops there — no scorers, no minutes, no order of events — so the only honest description of the afternoon is that both clubs scored twice in the second period after neither had scored in the first.

Everton arrived tenth on four points from two matches, United twelfth on three from two, a table too young to mean much and one that certainly does not describe the distance between these clubs last season: United third on 71 points, Everton thirteenth on 49, twenty-two points and twenty-two goals apart. The draw is closer to what the two small 2026/27 samples suggested than to what the full 2025/26 table did.

It also broke the fixture's recent pattern. Both meetings last season finished 1-0 to the travelling side: Everton at Old Trafford in November, United at Goodison Park in February. Neither of those produced more than a single goal or anything other than a winner. This one did both.

A point each, which in the first week of September settles very little. Everton's side of it is the more notable: three matches, five points, still unbeaten, and a club that managed only 47 goals across the whole of last season has already scored five, two of them against a side that finished twenty-two points above them.

United are harder to read, and that is the point worth making. Their three fixtures have been a promoted club, another promoted club and this one — 0-2 at Hull, 5-2 at home to Ipswich, then two away points at Goodison. Only the last has a benchmark attached, and what it says is that a 2-2 at a mid-table club is an ordinary afternoon for a side that finished third. It neither contradicts last season's 71 points nor confirms them.

Our pre-match call was Double Chance X2 (Draw or Manchester United FC) at 1.42. It landed on the half of the selection we flagged as live rather than the half the league table pointed at. Three strands went into it: the twenty-two point gap, United's 1-0 win at this ground in February, and a two-match head-to-head in which the visitor won both. The first two argued for a United victory and neither produced one. The third argued only against the home side, and in the loosest sense it held. We took the double chance rather than United outright because these are two clubs that draw a great deal — eleven times for United last season, ten for Everton — and that is the strand of the case which actually paid.

Verdict: won