Centre-forwards will - quite rightly - ultimately always be based on their goal output but on a day when his team-mates showed him how it should be done, Dominic Calvert-Lewin still produced the kind of all-round centre-forward's performance to show why he remains so important to how this Everton side plays.

The last time the Blues number nine came up against Arijanet Muric, the Kosovo keeper gifted him a goal as the Yorkshireman had the speed of thought to realise that the then-Burnley custodian had a penchant for taking an unnecessary touch that could play him into trouble.

That gamble paid off as Everton - having gone on a club record winless run in the Premier League stretching beyond Christmas to Easter (since they previously defeated the Clarets) - defeated Vincent Kompany's side.

As a top Premier League striker and only the fourth Everton player to net 50 times in the competition, the 27-year-old should really be more convincing in one-on-one situations and after his recent misses at Aston Villa, he suffered a similar fate here after fashioning a chance himself and should again have made the net bulge with a chance right at the end of the game.

It wasn't his day in this respect, but Calvert-Lewin still led Ipswich's defenders a merry dance all afternoon, showing that while Jarrad Branthwaite is the Blues' most valuable asset, it was arguably even more important to retain the striker's services over the summer when it came to ensuring the club's historic final season at Goodison Park proves to be one without dramas.

No Branthwaite, no problem

Back on September 28, Jarrad Branthwaite made a triumphant return for Everton as he made his first appearance of the season to help the Blues record a first ever Premier League comeback win under Sean Dyche.

There was a danger therefore in thinking that Everton needed the presence of their breakthrough star of last season in order to be successful.

Branthwaite is a potentially generational talent. Anyone who has watched him quickly develop into one of the most-dominant centre-backs in the Premier League in recent months can see that.

The Blues were absolutely right to consider a brace of penny-pinching offers from Manchester United for his services derisory. This wasn't smart business from Sir Jim Ratcliffe - the man who wants someone else to foot the bill to rebuild Old Trafford - but rather downright insulting.

However, while Everton - or any team in the division - would be stronger for having Branthwaite's presence in their side, with 'The Carlisle Kaiser' not coming through a late fitness call, the team still has the structure in place to cope with his absence.

Keane of course also found the net in Everton's previous away win at his previous club Burnley back on December 16. Curiously, Branthwaite was also absent for that success at Turf Moor as he missed the fixture through suspension.

Ipswich's bad habits

Everton's previous game with Ipswich Town was a 2-1 win for the Suffolk outfit back on February 2, 2002, as a Matt Holland goal stunned Goodison Park but their wait for a first Premier League victory in 22-and-a-half years goes on. Since that day, the East Anglian outfit - who got hit for six at home to Liverpool the following weekend, allowing Abel Xavier, a defender who failed to find the net in 49 matches for the Blues to score on his Reds debut - have only picked up one further three points, when Darren Bent netted for them to edge out Middlesbrough 1-0 on April 24 of the same year.

Football has changed a lot since back then when current Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna was just 15 years old and there was no VAR - refreshingly, Everton finally saw a penalty call go their way when Jack Clarke, who looks like a poor man's Jack Grealish and had earlier skewed an inviting chance to open the scoring high and wide, seemed to fall over his own feet - but following their rapid rise, it seems as though a few of Ipswich's younger followers might be getting ahead of themselves.

While chief executive Mark Ashton was respectful in his programme notes, stating: "It's been a long time since Everton were here last and we have worked so hard to bring fixtures like this back to the stadium on a regular basis," with captain Sam Morsy adding: "Playing Everton today is a huge fixture, a proper Premier League game," others were less reverential.

Perhaps it's just this correspondent being a grumpy old man and in truth you'd probably get similar responses at every club in the country, but listening to all 11 of Ipswich's young mascots - all of them born long after their team last won in the Premier League - predicting home victories, irked.

I'm not sure how many of John Deere's finest machines you could buy with an outlay of over PS100million but after back-to-back promotions the Tractor Boys have spent big following their top flight return, far more than the Blues have in recent years, yet the realities of life among the elite is starting to bite for Ed Sheeran's favourites and we all know what these bad habits could lead to come next May...