Everton kick off their second season at Hill Dickinson Stadium this weekend against Crystal Palace, and the mood around the club is complicated. David Moyes sparked enough of a revival to get Evertonians dreaming about Europe, then watched it dissolve into a mid-table crawl. Questions about his game management — the clock, the bench, both seemingly foreign concepts at key moments — haven't gone away. A fresh campaign is here, and the pressure is quiet but real.
Crystal Palace at home is a reasonable opener on paper. No fixture against the Eagles will ever carry the weight of that Goodison comeback from two goals down that kept Everton in the top flight — that one set the bar at the ceiling. But history says opening days can be remarkable in their own right for this club. Let's go through the best of them.
The Title-Winning Launchpads
September 6, 1890 set a tone that would define the entire season. Everton, runners-up the year before, hammered West Bromwich Albion 4-1 with a reshuffled side featuring new signing William Campbell and 20-year-old Jack Angus stepping in goal. By season's end, they'd edged out two-time defending champions Preston North End by two points to win the league.
August 27, 1927 looked routine — a 4-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday. It wasn't. Dixie Dean scored once that day and then didn't stop. He finished the season with 60 league goals, a record that has never been touched. Add FA Cup and international strikes and his 1927-28 tally reaches 67. One goal on opening day was just the first flicker.
August 24, 1963 had an almost poetic quality. Everton's final game of 1962-63 was a 4-1 demolition of Fulham that clinched the title. Their first game of 1963-64? A 3-0 win over the same Fulham side. Bobby Keetch put through his own net inside five minutes. Derek Temple and Alex Scott finished it off. Fulham have never won at Goodison in the league — 23 visits, 23 without a win, the last 22 consecutive defeats.
August 9, 1969 produced a gritty, pressure-cooked opener. A condensed season ahead of the Mexico World Cup meant seven games in three weeks to start. Everton went 1-0 at Arsenal — John Hurst's 84th-minute volley from a free-kick — and then won five of the next six. That season ended with another First Division title, Harry Catterick's second.
Modern-Day Moments That Stuck
August 27, 1988. Tony Cottee. Thirty-five seconds. That's how long it took Everton's club-record signing to score on debut against Newcastle. He added two more. Graeme Sharp got another. 4-0, and Cottee had a hat-trick before most fans had finished their pies. He'd go on to score 72 goals in 184 Everton appearances, but nothing announced him quite like that afternoon.
August 17, 2002 was about a 16-year-old from Liverpool who didn't score and got substituted in the 67th minute of a 2-2 draw with Tottenham. Wayne Rooney's debut was unremarkable by the numbers. What followed wasn't — youngest Premier League goalscorer, six goals that season, nine the next, sold to Manchester United for a fee that still stings some Evertonians. That day at Goodison was the starting pistol.
September 13, 2020 stands as one of the sharper away-day statements of the Ancelotti era. Everton hadn't won at Spurs since December 2012. James Rodriguez, Allan and Abdoulaye Doucouré were new, the energy was different, and Dominic Calvert-Lewin's header was enough. Jose Mourinho lost an opening-day game for the first time in 19 years of management. The win didn't launch a title charge, but it felt like something shifting — briefly.
August 11, 2018 gave Richarlison his entrance. Two goals against Wolves on debut, the second a curling finish around Rui Patricio that announced him immediately. Everton finished 2-2 after Phil Jagielka's red card, but that barely mattered. The Brazilian had shown enough in 90 minutes to justify every penny of his £40-50 million fee.
August 14, 2021 was a different kind of memorable — the uncomfortable kind that turns out fine. James Rodriguez absent, COVID protocols disrupting preparation, a Michael Keane error gifting Southampton the lead. Then Rafa Benitez said something at halftime that worked. Richarlison equalized, Doucouré found the top corner, Calvert-Lewin headed in a diving finish. 3-1. A full Goodison crowd for the first time since the pandemic, and the Blues delivered when they had no right to expect it of themselves.
This weekend's game against Palace won't carry the same historical weight as Dixie Dean scoring 60 in a season or Cottee bagging a hat-trick inside 35 seconds. But Moyes needs a statement early. A slow start, combined with lingering doubts about his tactical decisions late in games, will make the noise around the club louder very quickly. Everton's opening-day record is genuinely storied. Whether 2026-27 adds to it is another question entirely.
