Here are your Everton morning headlines for Tuesday, April 5.
Everton 'panic mode' concern as Frank Lampard's Burnley challenge becomes clear
Michael Ball thinks the Blues are getting a reputation for making silly mistakes and need to stop being drawn into giving away cheap - and costly - free kicks.
In his weekly ECHO column, he writes: "It feels like Everton are getting punished for every mistake they make this season.
"But the reality is that we really need to stop making those mistakes in the first place. It is as though the players are playing in panic mode - none of them want to be seen as the one to let the side down.
READ MORE: Frank Lampard needs Everton players to find ruthless streak as familiar failings surface
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"This team is getting a reputation for acting rashly and we are giving away so many silly fouls in and around the box. The players need to back themselves a little bit more. With Michael Keane and his second booking against West Ham, for instance, he needs to be thinking: 'Where is the advantage in winning the ball there?' He has to consider what he will gain from engaging a player in that area.
"The side needs to concentrate on defending the goal - a goal is only small. Take your opportunities to defend it and don't get sucked in. That is what other players are trying to do to us, they are trying to entice tackles, they are trying to entice you into making a mistake. That is what they do.
"They are looking at an Everton side that is giving away silly free kicks. Our mindset needs to change and we need to start focusing on other the weaknesses of other teams. And when mistakes are made it is pointless focusing on them. It is pointless being negative. We need to learn to let go of the negatives but take hold of every positive and build on it.
"Burnley will play with no pressure on them on Wednesday night. The pressure is on Everton to get three points. And the players have got to be able to take that pressure."
Check out Michael Ball's weekly ECHO column in full HERE.
Everton midfielder overshadowed on day he signed became Goodison Park favourite before retiring at 28
Joe Parkinson completed a match in a royal blue jersey for the last time some 25 years ago today but what might Everton pay for a player of his ilk now? One of Joe Royle’s ‘Dogs of War’, Parkinson and Barry Horne won the midfield battle at Wembley against Roy Keane and Paul Ince as the Blues defeated Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United 1-0 in the 1995 FA Cup final.
For Eccles-born Parkinson, the success against the club he supported as a boy demonstrated the rapid rise he had enjoyed since his transfer to Goodison Park from third tier Bournemouth just 14 months earlier. Signed by Mike Walker, whose assistant Dave Williams knew the player from his time at the Cherries, Parkinson arrived on Merseyside in low-key fashion given that he joined the club on the same day as Arsenal’s Swedish international Anders Limpar in March 1994.
Recalling the day, Parkinson told the ECHO : “I met Anders Limpar at the airport and I didn’t realise we had the same agent. We flew up together and he was a lovely guy. We had a press conference together to announce our signings for Everton and nobody asked me any questions, I don’t think anybody knew who I was, it was all about Anders, which I didn’t mind.”
Just 25 when he took to the field for the final time, Parkinson spent two-and-a-half years desperately trying to return to fitness before his retirement from professional football was confirmed in 1999. He underwent surgery twice and even travelled to Sweden to have a dead man’s cartilage inserted into his knee but to no avail.
A generation on, Parkinson appreciates how mental health issues are now better-understand and now more openly discussed because he acknowledges that having to hang up his boots prematurely had a huge impact on his well-being.
He told the ECHO: “At the time you don’t think it’s going to finish your career but unfortunately it did so they were tough times. People talk about mental health now but I think I must have gone through some bad times.
“In my day it was just ‘get on with it’ really. It was a very difficult time for me, I don’t think I understood fully what was happening.
Read the full exclusive interview with Joe Parkinson HERE.
