Scott Phelan admitted that his Everton Women team did not deliver the performance he expected as the Blues fell to a 1-0 defeat away at newly-promoted Crystal Palace.
Lexi Lloyd-Smith’s first-half strike was enough to settle the fixture, and the Blues boss pulled no punches in stating how the Toffees will need a lot more moving forward. Speaking to evertontv after the encounter at VBS Community stadium, Phelan said:
“Not a performance we expected. I think there was a bit of fear in our game and I don’t
know where that has come from.
“That was one thing I did not expect from the team, we’ve asked them to do certain things and, without any extra pressure, to just go and play the game, enjoy the game, and execute the game plan, which we didn’t do often enough with the ball.
“And then without the ball we knew transition moments would be important today. They [Crystal Palace] have a little bit of speed on the counter attack and we couldn’t give the ball away cheaply in central areas. That is something that we knew about them and the goal proved that.
“All we can do is pick a team and the players an opportunity to play with the hope that the best team was picked. I think some of them failed to take an opportunity, even though it was early in the season, to put some of the performances in that we have seen today were well below what we’d expect and some of the girls that cam on did make some sort of impact in the last half an hour.
“But we are going to need more than that moving forward.”
Club captain Megan Finnigan named amongst the substitutes to mark her first appearance in the matchday squad since January 2025.
The starting XI consisted of Courtney Brosnan between the sticks, behind a backline of Hannah Blundell, Rion Ishikawa, Hikaru Kitagawa and Maz Pacheco.
Clare Wheeler and Ruby Mace – returning to her natural central midfield position – sat deep in midfield, while Zara Kramzar assumed the No.10 role as the trio of Ornella Vignola, Holly McNamara and Yuka Momiki made up the front line.
The hosts had the first real chance of the afternoon through Shannon O’Brien, who attempted to catch Brosnan with an audacious 30-yard-chip that was gathered by the retreating keeper, while at the other end, Mace found space on the edge of the box on 24 minutes, but skewed her strike wide of the mark.
The Blues were in the ascendency and threatened once more five minutes later through Kramzar, was inches away from turning home Momiki’s dangerous free-kick.
But it was the Eagles who broke the deadlock on 34 minutes through Lloyd-Smith, slotted past Brosnan after finding space behind the Blues’ backline.
Everton looked for an equaliser before and were inches away from doing so through Kramzar/Momiki combination. The Slovenian collected the latter’s half-cleared set-piece from the right, but her strike bounced out off the upright.
With the Toffees still chasing the game, Phelan made his first changes after the hour mark as Wheeler and Momiki made way for Rosa van Gool and Hannah Cain, the latter making her second debut for the club after kickstarting her career with the Toffees.
But it was Palace who had the ball in the net two minutes later, again through Lloyd-Smith, only for the linesman’s flag to halt the forward’s celebration.
McNamara came inches away from marking her Everton debut with a goal 12 minutes from time following great work from Vignola, however the Australia international curled her effort narrowly over the bar.
One minute later, Honoka Hayashi and Hannah Silcock replaced Kramzar and Blundell as Everton continued to push throughout eight minutes of additional time, but the hosts held on to claim the three points in this WSL curtain raiser.
The Blues return to the WSL’s most iconic venue on Sunday (2pm BST), as new girls Charlton Athletic arrive at Goodison Park in what now looks like a must-win game for Phelan’s side.
Tickets for Everton Women’s first home fixture of the campaign can be purchased here.
