Ronald Koeman heaped praise on his Everton side for an "outstanding" performance despite being left to settle for a 1-1 draw at home to Crystal Palace on Friday.
Christian Benteke rescued a point for the visitors upon his return to Merseyside with a brilliant header four minutes into the second half after Romelu Lukaku had put Everton ahead, but Koeman was not going to let that take the shine off what he deemed an impressive performance.
The Dutchman was eager to see an improvement on the display Everton produced in the 1-0 defeat at Bournemouth last time out in the Premier League and was pleased with the reaction of his team.
"The team performance was outstanding," he told Sky Sports. "Of course we'd like to create more opportunities, maybe we had the biggest one through Gana [Idrissa Gueye] in the second half, but they [Palace] scored and thought it was 2-1 [when Damien Delaney had a goal disallowed for offside].
"Maybe it was offside or not, I don't know. It was difficult to understand all the refereeing decisions and maybe in that he made a fault.
"It's a good point in the end – you like to win at home, especially when 1-0 up.
"We defended set plays and second balls well against a difficult team. One time they took their chance from a drill, but it's not a bad point.
"You can't stop every cross, even long balls from midfield. We did good defending, but it is also the quality of the player that you have to understand."
