SAME SIREN. Same Z cars anthem blared out before kick – off.. But not the same old song within Everton’s splendid new home sweet home.
The Hill Dickinson Stadium with just about every one of its 52,769 seats filled was the scene of the happiest of house-warmings for David Moyes and his players.
PAJack Grealish bagged two assists on his full debut for Everton[/caption]
GettyThe Toffees were in top form as they beat Brighton 2-0[/caption]
GettyIt was Everton’s first match at their new Hill Dickinson stadium[/caption]
PAThe home fans were in fine form at the magnificent arena[/caption]
Iliman Ndiaye, scorer of the Toffees’ last two goals at Goodison in a 2 – 0 win over Southampton three months earlier, wrote his name in the history books as the first to hit the net on moving day.
James Garner bagged the second, Jack Grealish starred and Jordan Pickford got into the spirit of things with a fine penalty save as Brighton hoped to spoil the party
The clash was the history–making start of a hoped-for new future for a club that had spent the last years almost drowning in debt.
Now, on the waterfront, £800million spent on creating the Prem’s 7th biggest stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, serious cash can now be stacked up with almost 20,000 more seats than the Grand Old Lady.
It also offers Grealish the chance of better times ahead.
The £100m star, who discovered he had outlived his usefulness for Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, was welcomed with open arms on loan by Moyes.
He was repaying the favour by the 23rd minute having already shown Mats Wieffer that he wasn’t backing down from the right back’s fierce early challenges.
He delivered the kind of pass in that moment from the left flank that once made him worth that British record fee paid to Aston Villa in the first place.
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True enough, it was Ndiaye who began the attack, sending the ball forward to Grealish’s fellow home debutant Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.
The £25m buy from Chelsea then found Grealish, deployed on the left side of a middle three.
Wieffer just didn’t know what hit him as Grealish controlled, made space a yard from the goal line and then fired an absolute peach of a cross – and Ndiyae couldn’t miss at the far post.
Astonishingly – and an indication of how he had lost himself at the Etihad – that was only his second Prem assist in TWO years.
It wouldn’t, however, be the last of a day that the Toffees fans will talk about for many a year to come.
That first contribution said everything about his fall from grace and was also everything that Moyes’ side were not in a miserable 1–0 defeat at Leeds six days earlier.
GettyIliman Ndiaye opened the scoring for Everton[/caption]
ReutersThe winger fired home after being played in by Grealish in the 23rd minute[/caption]
There was good fortune, and plenty of it, for Everton too before the jubilation of that first-ever goal at the towering new ground.
Brighton trashed the first game of their opponents’ final season at the old place a year earlier, winning 3–0.
They could have had two more goals before Ndiaye struck – Kaoru Mitoma delivering a quite magnificent right – footed volley in the 18th minute that clipped the top of Pickford’s bar.
Less than 60 seconds later Danny Welbeck, replacing Georgino Rutter, somehow fired over from six yards as he met Yankuba Minteh’s perfect low cross.
APJames Garner bagged Everton’s second after another Grealish tee-up[/caption]
Shutterstock EditorialHe smashed home a scorcher in the 52nd minute[/caption]
Ndiaye’s strike would then have been cancelled out had Jean Paul van Hecke’s stunning right footer not his Pickford’s right hand post.
And Matt O’Riley looked certain to draw the sides level a minute into first half time added on after puncing on a blunder by James Tarkowski.
The Everton captain didn’t scan that the midfielder was flying up from behind as he tried to touch the ball back to his but having first swerved wide of Pickford he was then denied by a desperate parry from the England No 1.
Unquestionably the Seagulls played some lovely stuff – after the interval as well as before it.
GettyJordan Pickford showed his class late on[/caption]
Shutterstock EditorialHe saved a penalty from Brighton’s Danny Welbeck[/caption]
They undoubtedly left feeling seriously hard done by for they showed more quality, Pickford brilliantly saving Welbeck’s 77th minute penalty.
Yet that spot kick was the second extremely harsh VAR spot kick judgement against Everton, Dewsbury-Hall deemed guilty as he blocked Minteh’s shot – just as Tarkowski was left stunned after getting in the way of Anton’s Stach’s attempt at Elland Road.
Yet there was never anything but the feeling that Moyes’ men wanted this more – maybe fired up by a sense of history, destiny, even.
And maybe the new home is a lucky one as well.
In the 52nd minute came their second, what turned into the clincher, slammed home by Garner, as Grealish once again delivering the set – up.
ReutersGrealish was the star of the show on Merseyside[/caption]
ReutersDefeat was tough to take for Fabian Hurzeler[/caption]
The 29 year old, who sucked up half of his £300,000 Etihad wage to rehabilitate his England ambitions on the banks of the Mersey, spent the whole afternoon loving every minute.
That cheeky grin was back, too, as he controlled Idrissa Gueye’s floated flick towards him before the exquisitely – weighted touch into Garner’s path.
His shot hit the net in front of the South Stand, the new Gwladys Street End, like a rocket.
Away up there, supporters might have been suffering from a touch of vertigo, so steep is the incline, a millimetre, indeed, inside the legal limit for such a construction.
But they all left, like Moyes’ side, not looking down and feeling a bit queasy.
Instead they were they are looking up to new Blue horizons.
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