Everton vs Crystal Palace prediction: 4 of 4 AI models back Everton

The shape of this game

This is a matchweek-one meeting of two clubs in very different states of readiness, and that — not form tables from a season that ended 89 days ago — is what decides it.

Crystal Palace arrive with Pierre Sage in his first competitive match, having replaced Oliver Glasner in June after a trophy-winning spell at Lens. Sage is a controlled-possession coach installing a system that is materially different from the aggressive back-three, wing-back-driven transition machine Glasner built. Previews are near-unanimous that Palace will be conservative away from home while the ideas bed in. Crucially, the Eagles' most important attacking pieces are short of match sharpness after the 2026 World Cup: Daniel Muñoz has played roughly 18 minutes of pre-season and is expected to start on the bench with new signing Óscar Mingueza in at right wing-back, and Jean-Philippe Mateta had not featured at all in pre-season as of the German trip. Add a fitness doubt over Dean Henderson (ankle twisted in the Freiburg friendly, with Walter Benítez the alternative) and a front line that may pair Ismaïla Sarr — 21 goals last season but with transfer noise around him — with Jørgen Strand Larsen and one of Pino/McNeil, and you have a side whose combinations are new even where the personnel are not. Adam Wharton, at least, started the Freiburg friendly and is fit; he is the one player who can give Palace control if the game becomes a midfield chess match.

Everton are the more settled proposition but hardly convincing. Moyes closed last season on a seven-game winless run (D3 L4) and admitted publicly this week that the squad still needs "quite a few" additions. The business has been modest — Hayden Hackney, Christian Nørgaard, Brennan Johnson (arriving as part of a swap that sent Dwight McNeil the other way to Palace) — and Moyes has no specialist right-back after Seamus Coleman's retirement, with Jake O'Brien or Merlin Röhl filling in. The midfield is thinned by injury: Nørgaard, James Garner (groin surgery) and Tim Iroegbunam are all doubts or out, pushing Hackney and teenager Harrison Armstrong into big roles alongside Dewsbury-Hall.