Everton 1 – 0 Sheff United
Abdoulaye Doucouré scored the game’s only goal as Everton rounded off their 2023-24 home campaign with victory over Sheffield United in the sunshine at Goodison Park.
The Frenchman nodded in a simple finish with half an hour gone to settle a contest that had more than a whiff of “dead rubber” about it at times.
The Blades, their relegation back to the Championship already confirmed, became the first team in Premier League history to conceded more than 100 goals in a season while, at the other end, they hardly troubled Jordan Pickford.
Sean Dyche made a couple of changes to the side that started at Luton the Friday last night, handing Seamus Coleman a start at right back and bringing Amadou Onana back in to replace Jack Harrison whose season is over after he sustained an injury.
James Garner moved out to the right flank in his absence and Everton made the early running as Dominic Calvert-Lewin tested Wes Foderingham with an ambitious effort from the angle after he had cut inside from the right.
The Blues probably should have gone ahead in the 13th minute, though, when Calvert-Lewin brilliantly brought a deep ball forward under his spell and squared it to Doucouré but Foderingham spread himself well to block his shot from close range.
DCL saw a deflected low saved before Cameron Archer at Sheffield United’s first sight of goal when he bent a shot a yard wide before Everton took the lead.
Calvert-Lewin won another long ball forward and laid it off to Onana who found Dwight McNeil to split the defence with a low pass. The striker took it wide of Foderhingham and clipped a cross back into the six-yard box where Doucouré arrived to nod into the empty net.
A flare-up between Calvert-Lewin and Jack Robinson where the Blades defender ended up shoving the forward to the ground with two hands to the chest saw him escape with only a yellow card.
The visitors then had a brief flurry but were denied by Pickford who put in an excellent tackle in his own box and then foiled Andre Brooks with a low save at his near post.
The first half ended with Doucouré’s looping header off a Garner cross looping wide and the Toffees went into the interval a goal to the good.
Though Onana had the first real shot in anger five minutes into the second period that deflected over and, not the first time in what was a terrible refereeing performance overall, Stuart Attwell erroneously awarded the Blades a goal-kick, Everton’s urgency to pad their lead largely dissipated until the final quarter of an hour.
Ben Brereton Diaz blazed a decent chance over the bar and failed to find the target with a header from a dangerous cross a few minutes later while Gustavo Hamer went close on the counter-attack when his shot was deflected behind.
Dyche withdrew Doucouré and McNeil for Lewis Dobbin and André Gomes and Garner just missed the far post with a skidding shot-cum-cross but it was Archer back down the other end who almost wiped out the lead when another 25-yarder flashed past the upright.
Then, in the closing stages, it was the appetite of Youssef Chermiti, on for Calvert-Lewin in a 79th-minute change, to score his first Everton goal that saw the hosts twice threaten to seal it.
First, the young Portuguese smashed an effort just wide of the angle of crossbar and post before Foderingham denied him with a save in the fifth minute of stoppage time.
Finally, after Gomes had been forced off again with a laceration to his brow from a flailing elbow, Chermiti’s great in off the byline ended with him cutting the ball back invitingly for Garner but he skied a left-footer with the goal at his mercy.