Salomón Rondón doubles up to send Everton past battling Boreham Wood

There was no seismic upset at Goodison Park but no FA Cup rout or humiliation either. Boreham Wood, bidding to become only the second non-league club to reach the quarter-finals, made life extremely difficult for Everton before Premier League superiority told.

Salomón Rondón struck twice in the second half to take Frank Lampard’s team into a last eight meeting away at Crystal Palace. They will need to improve significantly on this display to reach the semi-finals at Wembley but the night belonged to Luke Garrard and his accomplished side. The Hertfordshire club defended expertly throughout and underlined why they are firmly in pursuit of promotion to the Football League this season.

Everton have been a class act since drawing the non-league side, Garrard had said, with the Premier League club paying for their visitors’ specially commissioned fifth-round kit, taking care of travel arrangements and sorting their accommodation. The same was true of Everton’s moving anti-war statement prior to kick off too.

Ukraine international Vitalii Mykolenko, the club’s January signing from Dynamo Kyiv, was named captain for the night by Lampard. He led out an Everton team draped in Ukraine flags, as were the players of Boreham Wood, and as the teams emerged on to the pitch the traditional pre-match strains of Z-Cars were replaced by John Lennon’s Imagine. Both sets of players gathered behind a blue and yellow banner carrying a hopeful, poignant line from the song. “Imagine all the people, Sharing all the world.” Outside, all MegaFon branding had been removed from the stadium after the suspension of Everton’s sponsorship deals with Russian companies backed by Alisher Usmanov, the oligarch close to the club’s majority shareholder, Farhad