Everton find themselves in the bottom three as they head into six crucial matches in the club's history to round off the 2021/22 campaign.
The Blues were beaten 2-0 by Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday shortly after Burnley had secured what was a vital 1-0 win for them against Wolverhampton Wanderers. That dragged the Clarets out of the relegation zone at the expense of Frank Lampard's side.
Everton have six matches remaining in their season to try and save themselves from being relegated, one more than Burnley and Leeds United just above them have. And looking ahead to those remaining games was a big part of our latest discussion in the Royal Blue Podcast.
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Host Connor O'Neill was joined by Gav Buckland and Adam Jones to look ahead at what the Blues need to change if they are to stay up.
Gav: The problem we have at the moment is scoring goals, isn't it? We're finding it difficult to find the back of the net, I know Calvert-Lewin's been missing, but he's even struggled when he's been in the team. In a strange way, as much as our defence has been a target for criticism all year, at the moment we're finding it difficult to score. That's what we need to do in the last five or six games, find the back of the net.
We need to find a way of doing that, because we've struggled the last few games. I hate the phrase 'taking the positives', but it's probably the best description of it. At Anfield we showed we can compete.
Take that into the Chelsea game. The irony is we've probably played better against the bigger teams this season than some of the sides down the bottom. Hopefully we can take that into the game on Sunday as their season is maybe tapering off a bit, I although know they've got the FA Cup final coming up.
Connor: Adam you've watched the Blues all season, have you seen signs over the last few weeks that there is a fighting spirit and they can pull themselves out and above that dreaded line?
Adam: Whether they can get themselves over the line or not I think is a different question. I do think we have seen an increased level of fighting spirit and a lot of that is down to a new man on the touchline.
Everton fans for the first half of the season, it was no secret that they couldn't relate to Rafael Benitez. It ended up that he stayed for longer than he really should have done, and whether that decision will come back to haunt Everton is yet to be seen. But fans are now seeing a man they can actually relate to on the touchline, they can get behind him. Lampard is straight-talking, and while he's learning on the job and not the most experienced manager, he's buying into this Evertonian, hard-working, fighting spirit.
I think that's really beneficial. When Benitez was in charge there was a real undercurrent of negativity and quite understandably so. There were issues with the manager, issues with the board - there still are issues with the board, of course. But now they've changed themselves around to have this sense of positivity, and even at Anfield you could hear that. Despite going into that match in the bottom three, throughout the first half it was the Evertonians you could hear in the away end.
That energy I understand will obviously be of a benefit, but I think the problem is you can't only rely on that. As much as we'd like to think so, you just can't. You need quality as well, you need to be clinical in the final third, you need to stop giving silly goals away at the other end of the pitch. The evidence that we've seen from Everton over the course of this season so far is they can't do that.
The reason Everton are in the bottom three is because they haven't been able to do that consistently over the course of this season. Those mistakes are going to cost you, and that's the more concerning thing for me.
I'm not necessarily concerned about the fighting spirit anymore because I do think Everton have shown that, certainly compared to what they were showing over the latter stages of Benitez. But it's not enough - the last few months have proven it's not enough.
They need to have increased levels of quality as well, so in these last six games they need to show something different in terms of quality. Otherwise, you can have as much fighting spirit as you want, you're not going to get the results unless you cut out mistakes at both ends of the pitch.
