Everton’s unbeaten streak continues.
On Saturday, the Toffees appeared set to claim yet another victory, 2-0 up at home to Manchester United, thanks to goals from Beto and Abdoulaye Doucouré inside the first 33 minutes at Goodison.
However, Man United scored twice in eight minutes towards the end to salvage a draw, although the drama was not done there, with Ashley Young denied a penalty in injury time, following VAR intervention that Alan Shearer on Match of the Day believed was the wrong call, highlighting “two clear pulls on his shirt”.
Nevertheless, David Moyes’ men are now unbeaten in six Premier League matches, a record they’ll put on the line at Brentford on Wednesday.
Beto's amazing recent form at Everton
By opening the scoring at the weekend, Beto found the target in a fourth successive Premier League match, the first Everton player to achieve this since Richarlison in 2021.
Fair to say, this has come out of the blue, considering the Guinea-Bissau international striker had scored just five goals across his first 44 league outings for the Toffees, on target only once all season prior to this recent spree.
The 4-0 victory over Leicester City, the first game in this scoring sequence, Beto started simply because Moyes had no other striker at his disposal, given that Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Youssef Chermiti and Armando Broja are all out injured.
Alan Stubbs, who made 193 appearances for the Blues across two spells, believes Beto was really struggling for confidence, but now looks “a different player”, adding “he’s taken his goals really well”, making himself undroppable.
Breaking the Lines notes that Beto has ‘transformed into a pivotal’ player, adding he is ‘on the cusp of becoming the talismanic’ figure as Everton prepare to open their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock.
Remarkably, however, he’s being outscored over the last few years by someone who didn’t exactly enjoy a fond time at Goodison.
Former Everton striker is now outscoring Beto and Dominic Calvert-Lewin
While, as noted by Matt Furniss of Opta’s the Analyst, Beto has become one of the most ‘in-form’ strikers in the Premier League, a former Evertonian front-man, now 35-years-old, is still banging in goals on another continent.
Salomón Rondón’s 31-game stint at Everton isn’t exactly fondly remembered, considering he scored just three goals, none of which came in the Premier League, with Sky Sports pundit Andy Hinchcliffe describing him as “reckless” following a nasty tackle which rather summed up his time in blue.
Speaking on the Guardian Football Weekly, Jonathan Wilson once infamously described Rondón as ‘the best player in the world’ but in the specific role of operating as a lone centre-forward 40 or 50 yards away from the rest of his teammates.
Despite this high praise, Evertonians did not shed a tear when the Venezuelan mutually ‘agreed to terminate his contract’ in December 2022, six months before it had been due to expire.
Nevertheless, now in the latter stages of his career, Rondón is still going strong, currently with Liga MX giants Pachuca, for whom he has eight goals this season, including a hat-trick against Necaxa in November, most recently on target at Cruz Azul earlier this month.
Tuzos have qualified for this summer’s FIFA Club World Cup, by virtue of winning last year’s CONCACAF Champions Cup, with Rondón scoring twice in the final victory over Columbus Crew, and have been drawn into Group H alongside Real Madrid, RB Salzburg and Al-Hilal.
Meantime, at international level, the veteran striker scored thrice at last summer’s Copa América, as well as four times in World Cup qualifying, taking his tally to 45 goals for Venezuela, extending his all-time record, as la Vinotinto seek to qualify for the World Cup for the first time ever.
So, let’s see how his statistics compare to Beto and Calvert-Lewin.
2023
10
8
4
2024
26
4
6
2025 (so far)
3
6
1
2023
3
0
0
2024
4
1
0
Prior to Beto’s scoring spree in recent weeks, Rondón had outscored both he and Calvert-Lewin since departing Merseyside, netting 26 club goals in 2024 at a pretty high level; Global Football Rankings believes Liga MX to be the 14th strongest league in the world.
This does not mean Everton were wrong to let the veteran depart, but it does prove you should never write a player off, regardless of age or apparent lack of form.
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