New stadium, same old failure to kill games off

The walk out of Hill Dickinson Stadium felt frustratingly familiar on Monday night.

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This is a fresh campaign in a very new stadium and yet a theme is already starting to develop - one of missed opportunities for a club that is going places but maybe not quite so fast as it could be.

I was pleased at the start of this game and pleased for the 15 minutes of the second half.

Everton had lost back-to-back matches heading into the West Ham draw and a big part of the defeats at Anfield and Molineux was the slow starts. That needed to change, I expected it to change, and it did.

Everton were most impressive in the buildup to Michael Keane's opener and then at the beginning of the second half. At the break, new Hammers boss Nuno Espirito Santo sent his side out early - he could not have said much in his first team talk - and I expected a reaction.

Instead, it came from Everton and there was a 15-minute period before the hour where I thought they were finally going to kill this match off.

We didn’t, and that was annoying, particularly after Michael Keane’s opener, which came with West Ham looking passive and happy to sit back. I thought there was a real opportunity to go for the kill then.

Instead, we saw the tempo drop and the game settled into a rhythm that allowed West Ham to get a foothold.

They may have had a new manager but he had such little time to prepare for this match that this was still a club in disarray, so this was a real shame.