Conor Coady has bemoaned Everton’s lack of killer instinct against Newcastle United. Just one shot - and none on target - all game meant the Toffees did not land a glove on Eddie Howe’s men.
Everton have failed to score in four Premier League games this season and also fired a blank away at Tottenham Hotspur on the weekend. Alarmingly, the only time Frank Lampard’s strugglers have scored twice in a game was against Southampton on October 1.
By contrast, Newcastle - despite having several forwards sidelined due to injury - are joint-fifth in the goalscoring charts. A slender 1-0 win is all that was needed to beat Everton but the Magpies have smashed in 18 goals this campaign.
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More worrying for Everton is the form book, with four defeats in a row leaving them one point above the relegation zone. Coady called for increased potency in attack to help turn their ominous situation around.
"A ruthless streak, a goal (was missing)," he told Everton TV post-match. "We needed to push as a team - all of us. We need to be ruthless, we need to be relentless with it.
"I thought we had 10-15 minutes before half-time where they got the goal and it became a bit panicky but you're going to come to places like this and be under that pressure, you have to withstand it. We have to be strong enough as a team to withstand that and we stayed in the game.
"We had the ball but we needed to score, it's as simple as that. As a team, I don't think we did enough to do that.
"We need to get through a tough patch. We can't dwell on this. What we have to do is learn from it as quickly as possible because we need to stop this little bit of a run we're on at the minute and get back to our best."
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