Everton 0 – 1 Aston Villa
There was to be no fairytale return to Goodison Park for David Moyes in his first match back in charge of Everton as Ollie Watkins punished a defensive mistake to plunder the points for Aston Villa.
Moyes was back on the touchline as the Blues’ boss after a 12-year absence but while his new charges showed plenty of willingness and effort, they desperately lacked the quality needed to salvage anything from the game.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin missed a sitter at the death while Everton felt they should have had a penalty, either for an arm around Calvert-Lewin’s neck or a shove on substitute Jesper Lindstøm but referee Sam Barrott capped a poor display of officiating by ignoring the pleas for a spot-kick.
With only a few days to prepare for the visit of the Villans, Moyes opted for a very familiar line-up, with Ashley Young coming back in for Nathan Patterson and Abdoulaye Doucouré taking up his usual role behind the striker.
Not surprisingly, there was little change in terms of the team’s attacking effectiveness; instead it was the visitors who carried all the early threat with Amadou Onana seeing a shot deflected wide and another miss from 25 yards while Jordan Pickford palmed a Morgan Rogers effort behind.
Watkins should have opened the scoring after 17 minutes when Young gave him the ball with an awful back-pass but the England striker was closed down by his international goalkeeping team-mate, Jordan Pickford, and swept the ball past the far post.
At the other end, Calvert-Lewin had Everton’s first real sight of goal when Vitalii Mykolenko played a lovely ball down the channel and the striker drove forward before whipping a left-footer across Emiliano Martinez’s goal and just past the upright.
12 minutes later, Doucouré arrived in the box to meet the Ukrainian’s low cross but his prodded effort was too close to the keeper, who made the save while Pickford stopped Boubacar Kamara’s low drive for Villa.
Everton’s best chance fell to Calvert-Lewin once more but he couldn’t get enough purchase on his shot which hit the prone Martinez before Kamara hooked it away off his goal line while Rogers spurned a gilt-edged opportunity to send Unai Emery’s men into half-time a goal up when he lashed wide with the goal almost at his mercy.
After surviving another scare shortly after the restart when Rogers hooked a loose ball Pickford’s goal, sloppiness in the middle of the pitch by Everton gifted Villa the lead. Jarrad Branthwaite’s loose pass was seized on by Rogers who sent the striker away to calmly slot past Pickford.
The Blues generally struggled to make headway against a dogged Villa defence after that but they did grow into the contest as the second period wore on.
After either the referee nor the VAR had seen fit to award the Toffees a penalty, Villa made two desperate clearances from goalmouth meleés but that was as close as Moyes’s side came to levelling the game until stoppage time.
That’s when Orel Mangala forced a save from Martinez with a shot from the angle and, a minute later, Lindstrøm appeared to have served the equaliser on a plate for Calvert-Lewin but the striker fluffed his lines, scooping the ball over the bar from just six yards out.