Match talking points will appear here before kick-off.

• 1
  Everton finished 13th last season — their first campaign at the new Hill Dickinson Stadium down at Bramley-Moore Dock, a 52,000-seater that dwarfs old Goodison Park. The football's been steadier than spectacular so far. But the stadium itself, not the table position, is what most fans want to talk about right now.
• 2
  New signing Ainsley Maitland-Niles marked his Everton debut with an outrageous stoppage-time equaliser to deny Manchester United victory. It turned what looked like a damp home defeat into a 2-2 draw that Everton fans will be replaying for weeks. Not a bad way to introduce yourself to a new set of supporters.
• 3
  The club has been quietly tweaking the match-day experience too, including cheaper pints for the first 45 minutes at some of this season's opening home games. It's a small thing, but it shows how seriously Everton are taking feedback after their first year in the new ground.
• 4
  Everton have spent three straight seasons finishing in the bottom half of the table, so a settled mid-table campaign in a spectacular new home now counts as genuine progress. It's not the kind of consistency the club had in mind a decade ago, but it beats what came before it.
• 5
  Bring up the stadium with an Everton fan and you'll get pure pride. Bring up the last relegation battle they were dragged into and you'll get a noticeably more haunted look. Stick to the former.

• 1
  Michael Carrick has gone from emergency stand-in to permanent manager in the space of a season. He took over in January after Ruben Amorim was sacked, won 19 points from a possible 21 in his first seven games, and steered United to a third-place finish and Champions League qualification.
• 2
  That turnaround is the reason United fans are cautiously optimistic rather than braced for another crisis this season — the last permanent-manager appointment before Carrick didn't exactly go to plan.
• 3
  New signings Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko have both been getting on the scoresheet early, including in a wild 2-2 draw at Everton where Sesko headed United in front late on.
• 4
  That Everton draw was a proper gut-punch — United led with minutes left, only for debutant Ainsley Maitland-Niles to smash in a stunning stoppage-time equaliser. Worth bringing up if a United fan is in a good mood and you fancy bringing them back down gently.
• 5
  The real question of the season for United isn't whether they can compete for the top four — Carrick's already shown that's possible. It's whether last season's form was a genuine building block or a purple patch that's hard to repeat.