Everton manager Frank Lampard dismissed suggestions that his side had forgotten how to win after they threw away a 1-0 lead to lose 2-1 at home to the Premier League’s bottom club Southampton on Saturday.
Amadou Onana's first goal for the club gave Everton a half-time lead but a brace of strikes from James Ward-Prowse earned basement boys Southampton a win that moved them level on points with their opponents, who have a better goal difference.
Toward the end of the Blues' successful battle to beat relegation last season, then Burnley manager Sean Dyche suggested Lampard's team had forgotten how to win a match after his side came out on top in a crucial encounter at Turf Moor.
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And following a run of 10 defeats in 13 games, during which time Everton have won just once, Lampard was asked if that was the case now, too. He said: “I think that’s just football rather than forgetting to win. Sean Dyche went and said that about us last year and then we went and beat Manchester United and beat Chelsea in games that helped us stay up.
“Sometimes if you aren’t winning games, it can become contagious in terms of confidence and the feeling of winning games and we know we’re in that spot. So when you go 1-0 it’s crucial that you dig in and don’t make a mistake to give away a goal in the second half and all these things.
“Both their goals could have been stopped from our point of view. It feels like a casual statement, forgetting how to win, but I understand the point that we’re in a period of games that we’re not winning.”
Everton have scored just 15 goals in 19 matches so far this season in the Premier League, only scoring more than one goal in a game on two occasions, when they won 2-1 at Southampton on October 1 and defeated Crystal Palace 3-0 at Goodison Park on October 22. The latter is a result that remains their last three points and the Blues boss conceded that is not good enough.
Lampard said: “We have to do better. We’ve talked about that a lot in terms of what an attacking threat, a clinical threat does in games.
“You see it in the game, the feeling of the game, to not score enough goals is hard. You can have good periods in games and if you’re not scoring it keeps the other team in the game and that’s been a problem for us this year without a doubt.
“Sometimes as a coach you want to work to get there. The last bit is the hard bit in terms of you needing an individual to score – that’s not me taking my responsibility out of it – it’s a fact and we haven’t done it enough.”
Lampard insisted fan protests against the board were not a distraction for his players either with significant numbers of home supporters staying back in their seats after the full-time whistle. He said: “I don’t think I have to separate them or overlap them, I only have to focus on what we do so it’s all hearsay. It can add to the game but I certainly wouldn’t use it as an excuse from our point of view.”
When it came to the issue of picking up his squad, Lampard added: “I can only focus on me and the players because that’s my responsibility first and foremost and it’s only work. It’s easy, it sounds a really simple answer that it’s only work and focus because it’s not easy when you lose games because when you lose them in a consecutive time and at the minute we haven’t won enough games and it gets harder and you have to dig in more and understand your responsibility of playing for Everton and responsibility of coaching Everton, and give everything you can, those have always been the rules.”
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