Former Blues defender Michael Ball discusses the good and the bad he saw in the 3-2 win at Wolves
WOLVERHAMPTON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 30: Jack Grealish of Everton celebrates during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Everton at Molineux on August 30, 2025 in Wolverhampton, England. (Photo by Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
Jack Grealish of Everton celebrates during the Premier League match at Wolverhampton Wanderers
(Image: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
There was so much to like about what I saw at Wolves on Saturday. Watching from the away end, it was great to see Everton play with such positivity going forward.
Jack Grealish, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Iliman Ndiaye were all excellent and it was so refreshing to see an Everton frontline playing with such intelligence and skill. They deserve real credit for the good parts of that display and to come away from Molineux with a win was brilliant - three wins in a week is an excellent response after that disappointing start at Leeds United.
While there may be plenty of good things to build on heading into the international break, I do want to focus on some of the areas for improvement that stood out for me, however. As much as I enjoyed the trip to the Midlands, the afternoon would have been much more comfortable without the nervy ending.
The anxiety crept in because Everton made this match harder than it needed to be. The start was impressive and Beto’s early goal was a deserved reward for a team that was well on top. You could see that Wolves were struggling to cope and the supporters were beginning to get frustrated and that fed onto the pitch.
It is at times like that when Everton must learn how to be ruthless. Instead, in the minutes before the equaliser, it was those in Royal Blue who seemed to struggle. I am not sure what started it, but having been so fluent all of a sudden a number of missed passes and sloppy pieces of play crept into the display and it gave the hosts heart. The home team appeared to sense an opportunity and then the supporters did too and the stadium quickly became a tough place for Everton - even though they had been so comfortable until just before Hee Chan Hwang’s goal.
This trouble was self-inflicted and Everton - particularly if this is a side that is going to be more adventurous - must learn how to manage games in situations like this. After the equaliser, the ground became a cauldron as Vitor Pereira and his players seized the momentum and backed up the goal with a number of big tackles.
In the lead up to the goal it was almost as though the Everton players froze a bit. The game started to bypass them and it is in moments like that when you need your senior players to recognise the problem and step up. I actually thought Jack Grealish did that. He is a player known for what he can do going forward but his intelligence extends beyond what he can do with the ball at his feet, he can read the match situation. He continued to demand the ball, won a few useful free-kicks and managed to bring some composure back to the performance.
But he needed to be supported and for some of his teammates to bring in some gamesmanship to help stem the tide in time to prevent it from leading to a goal.
Everton managed to fight through that rough patch and the quality of the attack shone through again with those goals either side of half-time. But then the same thing happened again in the second half, allowing Wolves back into a game they should have been cut adrift from.
Jordan Pickford’s distribution was important in the third goal but there were times in the second half when he conceded possession too easily - often by aiming long goal kicks towards Ndiaye, one of Everton’s smallest players. It contributed to Everton losing the upper hand and allowing Wolves another foothold in the game, one that ended up with the second that forced such a tense ending. In that period, Everton became stretched and conceded too much space between defence and midfield. I think this may the result of the backline sitting deeper in the absence of Jarrad Branthwaite but it created a pocket of space that Wolves were able to exploit.
Both goals ultimately came from errors - more could have been done to stop the crosses for each of them and, while there were several mistakes in the build-up to the first, for the second it was Vitalii Mykolenko who switched off at the back post.
This all might sound harsh. This is a team that is still learning how to operate after a summer of change and there were so many good things on Saturday - not least three valuable points. But if Everton really do want to push into the top half of the table then they need to address some of the points that almost cost them at Wolves because better teams will punish them.