I just went 'wow what happened?' - Everton have a new undroppable

It was great to see that architects of Everton’s first away win in 10 months against Ipswich Town were an unlikely Sean Dyche hero and a couple of previously much-maligned figures.

Iliman Ndiaye broke the deadlock and he is my favourite player at this moment time. I’m just thinking ‘good luck’ to any players who woke up on Monday morning after a bad night’s sleep and have to try and mark him in training.

He’s one of those players who makes things happen and forces the opposition to commit themselves as he often has an opportunity to put the ball away or create opportunities for his team-mates – he’s just a threat – and I thought he played fantastically well again.

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We’ve been crying out for a player like that. When I had the first couple of opportunities to see him play, I was asking myself: ‘Is he really this good?’

Was it just because he was something different that we hadn’t had from an Everton player for a long period of time? Over the last few weeks, he’s shown his worth and his talent though.

He went to Marseille who were his boyhood club and maybe the pressure of the shirt was a bit too much for him? It can happen in football where you can’t settle or get into a rhythm at a certain club but let’s give some credit to Everton’s recruitment staff.

He doesn’t seem to be a typical Dyche player, but I think he’ll be one of the first on the team sheet now. We need to get the ball out to him as much as we can because he always tries to commit the defender and get half a yard on them.

As a defender, you don’t know what he’s going to do. If you go tight, he’ll spin you and if you let him off, he’s got the ability to find a pass or a cross to the strikers or to hit the target himself.

He keeps opponents guessing and it looks like he’s really enjoying wearing an Everton jersey so long may that continue.

Michael Keane has sometimes been the fall guy in the past, but he produced an absolute wonder-strike. It’s become something of an in-joke at Everton that he’s the best finisher at the club, but I think he proved that here with a finish on his supposed weaker foot.

I think even Kevin Sheedy – 65 today – would be happy with that finish. It was just brilliant to see.

If you watch him, he pulls off a little bit like a striker as well to give himself the room from that angle. It prompted a bit of a delayed reaction from myself, and I just went ‘wow, what’s happened?’

It was a fantastic hit but more importantly for me, for his manager and probably Michael himself, was his defending. I always want to see new faces coming in who can push the other players to reach the levels and keep the competition up.

The professionalism of the likes of Michael Keane and Ashley Young over the past couple of games has been outstanding. Maybe neither of them would be in the starting side when the entire squad is fit but it’s great to have people like that because even when you’ve made mistakes, you’re being brave and showing what you’re capable of doing.

Hopefully that kind of attitude from Keane and Young rubs off on the younger players, because, although they’ve had setbacks, they’re doing their jobs well when called upon and showing they’re capable of putting a top performance in.

I thought Dominic Calvert-Lewin played well, but so did the whole team. Dom will be disappointed because he’s missed a couple of one-on-ones that he should be putting away plus another shot on the turn.

On his first one-v-one, I think that last touch sort of let him down a little bit, he was too square on. If he’d moved to the side like Erling Haaland and opened his body up then I think that would have given him a bit more momentum to find the corner of the goal.

Maybe he’s tried to give the keeper the eyes twice because I thought the other side of the goal was a lot bigger and easier to hit but he’s the striker and he’s been there a lot more times than I have. It’s easy when you do it in training but I think he’ll be going back to Finch Farm to work on that as he’s making those bending runs, getting forward and Ipswich’s defence didn’t know how to handle him.

However, his overall play with his link-ups and pressing, enabled him to create his own opportunities and that was good to see. Yes, strikers are selfish and they’re never happy unless they’re on the scoresheet, but I’d rather see him miss opportunities like that than not get any opportunities at all as it shows he’s getting into the right places and hopefully over time he can start putting those kind of chances again.

A rare afternoon of comfort for Evertonians

I challenged Sean Dyche and his Everton team in last week’s column to be getting points out of every one of this block of games we’ve got now before the end of next month and it is an opportunity for us to showcase our qualities. Although we had a scare early on when Ipswich Town had a counter-attack and Jack Clarke should have probably hit the target, I think we did that more or less from start to finish at Portman Road.

Jordan Pickford only had to make one save towards the end and all in all it was a routine win, which is something that we’re not used to as Evertonians. Even though we’ve surrendered two-goal leads a couple of times already this season, I was still confident we’d see it through.

Ipswich kept trying but we were always one step ahead of them defensively. Obviously it’s great to get another clean sheet but the concentration, especially from the entire back four, was spot on.

We were reading the game and defending really well, winning our headers. For once, it was a nice, easy watch for our fans with the team able to express themselves at the right times while also doing the hard yards and it’s important that we keep our momentum up now to use this block of games to set our level for the rest of the season.

Kieran McKenna has done fantastically well getting back-to-back promotions and all the talk before the game was that this could be Ipswich’s opportunity to get a first three points. It’s a reality check for them though.

In the past when opponents have made mistakes, we haven’t always punished them so that was one of the most pleasing aspects of the win for me. Ipswich made errors and we smelled blood to punish them.

We should have probably scored more goals, but we did enough and that was good to see. We’ve let teams off the hook before now, but not Ipswich.

They’ve spent a lot of money to try and stay in the Premier League, but these new signings are going to take time to gel. There will be hot and cold moments for them, and this was a cold one so thankfully we were on form to exploit that.