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As Jack Grealish completed the formalities on his season-long loan move from Manchester City to Everton, there were plenty who wondered whether he still had the appetite to strut his stuff at the highest level. Approaching 30 and having helped City to a historic treble two years ago before seeming to lose his way somewhat under Pep Guardiola, there were no guarantees that the former Aston Villa star still burned with the requisite fire in the belly but his doubters need only have taken him at his word.
“I hope I can repay you now and I'm sure I will,” was Grealish’s message to Evertonians when he signed earlier this month. He is off to a flying start in that regard, registering two assists against Brighton & Hove Albion on his full debut at Hill Dickinson Stadium last Sunday, as many as he had managed for City in the last two seasons, and followed that up with two more at Molineux today as the Toffees held their nerve in the face of a late rally from Wolves.
This should have been a much more comfortable victory than the 3–2 scoreline suggests. At times, David Moyes’s side were irresistible in the final third, with Grealish, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Iliman Ndiaye combining to lethal effect ahead of the industry and craft of Idrissa Gueye and James Garner.
If the performance at Elland Road on the opening day was mystifying in its ineffectiveness, this display offered regular flashes of the swashbuckling Everton that the new signings promised they might be this season. Another exciting new recruit, Tyler Dibling, never made it onto the pitch, although that might have been down to the caution required in the later stages after the Blues had conceded an almost identical goal to the one they’d let in in the first half and were forced to batten down the hatches to see the match out.
Thankfully, although complacency crept in, they were pegged back to 1–1 and 3–2 and had to be grateful that Rodrigo Gomes lashed inches wide at the death, the Blues did hold on to record their third successive win in all competitions and, in stark contrast to the last three seasons, go into the international break on a high.
With Vitalii Mykolenko fit again, Moyes has been able to restore some balance to a side that looked anything but against Leeds and beat the Seagulls despite the fact that Garner was deployed as an emergency left-back. The Merseysider was moved back into his favoured central midfield role and had an excellent game alongside Gueye while Beto rewarded the manager’s faith in his ability to lead the line away from home with his second goal in the space of four days.
The Portuguese’s opener came early, before Wolves had had a chance to try and get to grips with Everton’s enterprising forward line. Fed by Grealish, Mykolenko’s cross from the byline was blocked behind and when the visitors kept the ball after the resulting corner was saved, the Ukrainian flighted a cross to the back post.
Grealish headed it perfectly back across the face of goal to pick out Beto and he had the simple task of nodding in from the close range to make it 1–0 with just six minutes gone.
In contrast to the energetic and purposeful team that had dragged themselves away from the drop zone so convincingly last season under Vitor Pereira, Wolves were mostly ponderous in possession and lacked the wherewithal to play their way through Everton’s press.
Indeed, the Molineux crowd were becoming audibly restless as the contest reached the 20-minute mark before things changed in an instant. Marshall Munetsi was played down the touchline by Jackson Tchatchoua and he whipped a speculative ball across the penalty area where Hwang Hee-Chan arrived unchecked by the oblivious James Tarkowski to slam it home ahead of Jordan Pickford.
Having dominated to that point, Everton were on their heels as the home crowd sensed blood and the game briefly became fractious and ill-tempered. From a Wolves corner, Hugo Bueno flicked the ball on into a crowded six-yard box but Emmanuel Agbadou could only hook it over the crossbar.
At the other end, meanwhile, another slick Everton move almost unlocked the hosts’ defence again as Dewsbury-Hall slipped a lovely pass to Grealish but his low shot from the angle was beaten away by José Sá.
Everton forced the error from the Wolves defence, however, to win possession back straight away and maintain the pressure. A lovely interchange between Grealish and Dewsbury-Hall saw the former cut a reverse pass into the box and the latter skipped past his man to reach it before cutting a square ball across goal where Ndiaye arrived to sweep it home.
Their lead restored and maintained going into the break, the Blues thought they had extended their lead to 3-1 within a minute of the restart. Gueye stole the ball off his man in midfield, quickly played it forward and collected a return pass from Grealish but when his shot hit a defender’s arm, fell to Ndiaye and the Senegal forward knocked in the loose ball, his celebrations were cut short by the linesman’s flag.
10 minutes later, however, Moyes’s men had their two-goal cushion with the pick of the three goals and what proved to be the winner from Dewsbury-Hall. Mykolenko’s intervention just inside the Wolves half saw the ball cannon off
Tchatchoua to Gueye and when he found Grealish in space, the No 18 turned and advanced before clipping it neatly into the path of Dewsbury-Hall who smashed a terrific shot across his man and in off the underside of the bar with a sweep of his left leg.
At this stage, Pereira’s men were on the ropes and had Everton gone for the jugular, they might well have run out convincing winners and spared themselves the nervy finale they and the travelling fans later endured. Beto was almost in but a heavy touch took it out of play over the byline, a Mykolenko centre was delivered behind Ndiaye, robbing him of a chance at a second goal, and Jake O’Brien headed wide from a free-kick but, on the whole, the Toffees allowed their attacking intensity to wane.
In the meantime, bolstered by a number of second-half substitutions — that of Fer Lopez for Tchatchoua in particular — Wolves began to make inroads as the match entered the final quarter of an hour and they scored again with 11 minutes left of the regulation 90.
This time a cross was allowed to come in from Everton’s left flank and with Michael Keane behind the play and Mykolenko on his heels at the back post, Rodrigo Gomes arrived to hammer the ball into the roof of the net.
Predictably, the Blues were forced back for the next five minutes and O’Brien had to head behind to concede an 84th minute corner, but they eventually regained control to run down another 10 minutes before Rodrigo Gomes spurned a gilt-edge chance to grab a point. Jean-Ricner Bellegarde’s drive was parried back into danger by Pickford but Gomes flashed the rebound the wrong side of the post from Wolves’s perspective.
The victory lifts Everton into the heady heights of fifth place for the time being and had their fans salivating at the notion that this new-look attack is only just getting familiar with each other. With four assists to his name already, Grealish has eclipsed in two games what the likes of Jack Harrison and Jesper Lindstrøm managed over a full season last term, while Dewsbury-Hall and Ndiaye make up the rest of a fearsome trio behind whichever striker is given the nod by the manager to lead the line.
Defensively, concerns emerged at a couple of lapses that saw Everton concede more than once on the road for the first time since Moyes returned and threatened to ruin all the glittering work at the other end of the field but the result was, as always, paramount.
With 48 hours left of the transfer window, there is still scope to add further reinforcements while the rest of the season beyond is pregnant with hope that it could be an enjoyable one for Everton’s long-suffering faithful.