Given the kick-off time on Sunday, Everton were afforded the opportunity to watch the results come in over the weekend before they played themselves.
Naturally, you start looking at the table and checking how far up the table we can go if we were to win. The feeling was one of optimism.
Manchester United had also been involved in a tough game on Thursday night in the Europa League and you are thinking that could be a factor as well. But despite the great welcome the fans gave the players, and the fact Goodison Park was rocking, for some reason we just never got at United in the way I hoped we would.
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We seemed very tentative in our play and scared to break our shape. We also failed to press as a team - but luckily got a goal against the run of play after just five minutes.
I really hoped the goal would wake us up and give us that boost we needed, but it didn’t, and it is disappointing because they are a struggling side right now.
United are still a club in transition and the last thing they would have wanted was a really tough game at Goodison - and unfortunately they didn’t get one.
Don’t get me wrong, United showed how good they are, but I just felt we could have done, and offered, so much more. The frustrating thing for me was that we have played against much better Manchester United sides and gave them tougher games.
I don’t want to single people out because it was one of those where a lot of players never performed and even after the goal, we never smelt blood and put it on United.
Given the kick-off time, Everton’s players had probably had a sleep in the afternoon and it looked like some of them hadn’t woken up. Even in the second-half everything just seemed so passive.
What summed it up for me was the difference in how the full-backs operated. Both Seamus Coleman and Vitalii Mykolenko were constantly under pressure when they received the ball, while Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot seemed to have enough space to take a few touches, compose themselves and pick a pass.
For me, it comes down to football intelligence and Everton were simply far too naive with their decision-making over the course of the 90 minutes. We showed a lack of concentration for both goals, while United showed us that their football intelligence is on another level to ours.
We may have rallied late on in a bid to rescue a point, but for me it was too late and left a feeling of what if. What if we had shown that intensity after the first goal?
Of course you are always going to lose football games, but the manner in which we did on Sunday was just massively frustrating. It was a huge opportunity missed.
Pickford must show more composure
If someone has the patience to watch the game back, watch the way Manchester United play out from the back.
David de Gea takes his time and waits for his whole team to be set before he decides whether to go into midfield or pick out one of his defenders.
Whereas when Everton try to do that, quite often James Tarkowski could be talking to his team-mates and Jordan Pickford will have passed the ball to him. So Tarkowski hasn’t had the chance to think about what he wants to do with the ball.
Jordan, in my opinion, needs to calm down. He needs to just wait until everybody is set and then decide what he is going to do.
There is no doubt he’s a top goalkeeper, but he just needs to relax and show some composure because that is what happens at Finch Farm. During training, Frank will set his team up and then outline what he wants them to do.
Again, it comes back to having football intelligence.
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