Positive Signs As Everton Pick Up First Win

A clean sheet, a first goal for Romelu Lukaku and a return to better form of the McCarthy-Barry axis in this 2-0 win at the Hawthorns augurs well for the immediate future.

A year ago, after three consecutive draws, a stirring performance against Chelsea marked the beginning of Everton's season in earnest as Roberto Martinez scored his first Premier League win as manager. If today's victory at The Hawthorns wasn't quite as impressive in terms of performance or stature, no-one will mind very much, particularly if it proves to be anything like the catalyst that triumph over Jose Mourinho at Goodison Park ended up being for the 2013-14 campaign.

Indeed, it promises to have been a significant result in more ways than a first win of the new season. Having shipped 10 goals in the opening three matches, Everton's defence – albeit a slightly changed one – registered a much-needed clean sheet and Romelu Lukaku notched his first goal, injecting vital confidence at both ends of the pitch as the squad begins a gruelling spell of six matches in a little over two weeks.

Questions over Lukaku's barren start to life as a full-time Everton player have been mitigated somewhat by the fact that he started the season with no pre-season to speak of and then played through a toe injury against Arsenal and Chelsea, so the pre-match focus was centred largely on the porous nature of that hitherto reliable back line.

It's not clear if Martinez's assertion in the press yesterday that Phil Jagielka's status as club captain by no means guarantees him a place in the starting line-up was a precursor to him reshuffling things up at centre-half, but he was forced into a change to the partnership that was ever-present in the first three games anyway by a dead leg for Sylvain Distin. Fresh off consecutive starts for England, John Stones was drafted in to play on the right side of central defence and would dispel any lingering fears or doubts over his readiness that may have cropped up during his uncertain displays in pre-season.

His cause and that of the rest of the Blues rearguard was helped by the platform provided by Lukaku's early goal and a relatively toothless West Bromwich Albion attack, but there were important signs of solidity and that some of the lessons learned, particularly from the 6-3 defeat to Chelsea, have been heeded.

Perhaps getting off the mark very early was one of them because the game was barely two minutes old when Lukaku struck to give Everton the lead. A move started with a terrific first touch by Steven Naismith ended with Jonas Olsson gifting Leighton Baines's low cross straight to the Belgian and he took one touch before instinctively curling a perfectly-placed shot around Ben Foster's helpless dive. It was a world-class finish – with his weaker foot no less – but his celebration – or lack thereof – against his old club was fittingly classy as well.

The Baggies, also winless coming into this weekend but reeling from a comprehensive 3-0 defeat at Swansea at the beginning of the month, were forced to respond and did so for much of the first half, albeit without ever really getting on top of the visitors. Chris Brunt and Saido Berahino almost combined to good effect after 11 minutes but Stones's lunging block helped the latter's shot fly over the bar and Craig Gardner failed to trouble Tim Howard with successive direct free kicks in the first half hour.

Initially, it hadn't been so much a case of Everton sitting back and inviting pressure as West Brom needing to press forward but, as the half wore on, the Blues' use of the ball, particularly coming out of defence, become less effective and that brought undue pressure on the defence. Still betraying some suspect positional play, Jagielka could only head into the path of Brunt but, thankfully, he lashed his shot into the side-netting while Graham Dorrans was afforded the space he needed to swing a ball in from deep that fell to Berahino but his effort deflected behind off Seamus Coleman.

When Everton did come forward, they found their hosts difficult to break downand, with neither Baines nor Coleman able to raid consistently down their respective flanks and Aiden McGeady having one of those afternoons where nothing much went his way, the onus fell largely to Naismith, the lively Kevin Mirallas, and Lukaku to make things happen. The Belgian duo traded shots from 20-plus yards to close out the half but both efforts flew narrowly over. Pleasingly, though, Lukaku was looking much more like the player of last season than the compromised one that began this campaign.

The Blues emerged from the half-time interval in more purposeful mood and really should have been 2-0 up within six minutes when Naismith was presented with the kind of opportunity you'd bet he would bury on current form. His quick first-time pass had found Lukaku in a pocket in front of the Baggies' defence and a neat step-over meant he evaded Olsson before firing hard and low to Foster's left. The goalkeeper's one-handed save fell right into Naismith's path but the Scot scooped the rebound over from seven yards out.

Despite their greater vigour after the restart, Everton still found many of their attacks slowing down into pretty but largely ineffective triangles outside the West Brom box. They were more threatening breaking with pace or attacking the spaces in the home side's half as they did twice midway through the second half.

In the first instance, Naismith was presented with the ball by Olsson (who had a 'mare, it has to be said) but dallied on the ball and was tackled before he could release Lukaku. In the second, though, Mirallas turned inside following a throw-in on the left flank, ignored Naismith's intelligent run to his right and elected to bobble a low shot towards Foster's near post. It looked like a routine save but the ball somehow squirmed under the England international's body and ended up in the net. 2-0, game over.

West Brom had had a couple of moments of their own prior to that killer second goal: first, when Howard had to scramble the ball away from the feet of Brown Ideye as he tried to connect with Andre Wisdom's low cross; and then when Jagielka had to fling himself in front of a shot from the same player. But they looked a broken outfit for a good 15 minutes after that second goal went in and, were it not for Foster, the scoreline could have been more flattering to Martinez's men.

McGeady flashed a shot wide from the edge of the box before the 'keeper twice denied Lukaku's replacement, Leon Osman, in impressive fashion – first with a reaction save to palm the midfielder's deflected effort behind, and then with another one-handed stop from Everton's best move of the match in which Mirallas's sublime heel-flick had fallen perfectly for Osman to drill goalwards with a first-time shot.

Everton's clean sheet was not automatic, though, and suicidal in-field passes from first Coleman and then the unusually profligate James McCarthy threatened to spoil it in the closing stages. It was left to Howard to keep his side of the scoreline blank with a superb double-stop in injury time when he parried close-range efforts from Berahino and Georgios Samaras. There was even time for Muhamed Besic to have another late cameo, marred by a harsh booking – the hope, one presumes, being that he gets all his mistakes out of the way in meaningless situations at the end of matches.

Overall, while it wasn't a thorough examination of Everton's defence, the team will and should take great satisfaction and confidence from the fact that they went away from home, kept a clean sheet and won fairly comfortably without ever really hitting the highs in an attacking sense that they did for periods in all three of the preceding fixtures.

Crucially, the McCarthy-Barry partnership looked much improved, with the former far more diligent in closing down the opposition in those important areas around the edge of the Blues penalty box and Barry looking composed and effective throughout. With that pairing so crucial to the way in which Martinez's team plays, their return to more familiar ways augurs well for the immediate future.

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