David Moyes did not play down the importance of Leicester’s final league visit to Goodison Park. “Crucial,” he had called a contest that could nudge Everton towards Premier League safety and enable the club to start planning for a better future. A team reborn under his leadership delivered emphatically.
An opening blitz that included the fastest goal scored at the historic old stadium destroyed Ruud van Nistelrooy’s abject visitors and secured Everton’s third successive league win under their new manager. Moyes has won as many league games in 17 days and four matches as his predecessor, Sean Dyche, managed in five months and 19 games this season. Moyes’s team have also scored six goals from open play in their past two home matches, one fewer than Everton had produced all season under Dyche.
“If you’d offered me three wins from four games in the position we were in I’d have said: ‘Thanks very much’ and taken it,” said Moyes. “It is a big result for us. We are getting closer to the teams above us rather than the teams below getting closer to us but I’m not getting carried away. The job to do is to make sure we are a Premier League team next season.”
That is Van Nistelrooy’s challenge too, but any confidence or momentum Leicester took from their defeat of Tottenham evaporated after 10 seconds; 10.18 seconds to be exact, the time it took Everton to kick off, play the ball back to Jordan Pickford, the goalkeeper to launch it and Abdoulaye Doucouré to score. The fastest Goodison goal was also the quickest scored by an Everton player.
Fastest Premier League goals of all time
7.69sec Shane Long, Watford v Southampton (2018-19)
9.11sec Philip Billing, Arsenal v AFC Bournemouth (2022-23)
9.82sec Ledley King, Bradford City v Tottenham (2000-01)
10.18sec Abdoulaye Doucouré, Everton v Leicester City (2024-25)
10.52sec Alan Shearer, Newcastle v Manchester City (2002-03)
10.54sec Christian Eriksen, Tottenham v Manchester United (2017-18)
11.90sec Mark Viduka, Charlton v Leeds (2000-01)
12.16sec Dwight Yorke, Coventry v Aston Villa (1995-96)
12.94sec Chris Sutton, Everton v Blackburn (1994-95)
13.48sec Kevin Nolan, Blackburn v Bolton (2003-04)
Beto held off Boubakary Soumaré as Pickford’s clearance sailed into the Leicester area but otherwise there was no visiting player to be seen as Doucouré raced through and slotted the fourth fastest goal in Premier League history beyond Mads Hermansen. Leicester’s defending was appalling. It did not improve.
Everton were two goals ahead inside six minutes. Leicester’s central defensive pairing of Wout Faes and Jannik Vestergaard were again caught daydreaming, this time by a fine ball out from the back by James Tarkowski. The Everton defender arched a pass around Vestergaard into the run of Beto. The centre-forward beat Hermansen with a similar finish to Doucouré’s opener. At the other end of the pitch Jamie Vardy shook his head in disbelief at what he was witnessing.
“We wanted to build on a good win at Spurs but we threw it out of the window in five minutes,” Van Nistelrooy lamented. “It was not good enough. We were not ourselves today.”
Beto was tasked with leading the line in the absence of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who is out for about six weeks with a hamstring injury, while James Garner replaced Orel Mangala in midfield after the anterior cruciate ligament tear that has ended the Belgium international’s loan from Lyon. The duo seized their opportunities in style. Garner was an elegant, creative influence on his first start in almost four months. Beto worked tirelessly, as he always does, but was also more composed and clinical against a shambolic Leicester rearguard.
Garner and Beto combined to give Everton a 3-0 interval lead for the second home game in succession. The former dissected Leicester’s central defence with a superb pass and Beto, clean through yet again, applied a confident finish into the bottom corner.
It could have been worse for the visitors, who had one shot on target. That ended in a routine save for Pickford from the substitute Patson Daka in the 73rd minute. Jake O’Brien, who again impressed at right-back, converted from a Garner corner but was offside. Everton had a decent penalty claim dismissed when Beto was sent sprawling by Vestergaard, and a Garner cross was deflected on to a post. All before half-time.
Jesper Lindstrøm and Iliman Ndiaye both went close to adding a fourth before a calamitous mix-up between Faes and Caleb Okoli presented the Senegal international with the goal his all-round display deserved.
Ndiaye breezed into the area before converting with the confidence that has crept back into Everton’s play since Moyes’s appointment.
