Everton pay price for missed chances as Fulham snatch win at Goodison Park
Fulham snatched victory from a wasteful Everton (Richard Sellers/PA)
Everton paid the price for a string of missed chances as their goalscoring issues were exploited by Fulham in a 1-0 defeat at Goodison Park.
A new season brought new hope for recent relegation strugglers Everton but for all the improvements Sean Dyche has made over the summer, it appears he he has not yet solved their problems in front of goal.
Substitute Bobby De Cordova-Reid struck the only goal of the game to get Marco Silva’s side off to a winning start.
Everton, the Premier League’s lowest scorers last season, were again without striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Despite generating twice as many shots as the visitors, Dyche’s side were undone by one square pass across their six-yard area when Andreas Pereira beat Nathan Patterson to an Aleksandar Mitrovic’s through-ball for a 73rd-minute tap-in by Decordova-Reid.
It burst the bubble of optimism which had been generated by an energetic and relatively creative opening 73 minutes of the season and will have infuriated Dyche as much as it delighted former Toffees boss Silva.
Michael Keane’s first-half goal was disallowed as the centre-back turned the ball into an empty net and celebrated almost apologetically before referee Stuart Atwell, having initially not blown, ruled there had been an infringement in the collision between goalkeeper Bernd Leno and James Tarkowski.
Both teams started without their recognised first-choice strikers: Calvert-Lewin was omitted due to his lack of minutes in pre-season while Mitrovic was left on the bench after ongoing interest from Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal.
But it was the home team who suffered the most as they generated 19 shots to their opponents’ nine from just 41 per
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