Frank Lampard stressed he is "prepared to dig in" as Everton's struggles continued with a 2-0 defeat at West Ham United.
The Blues boss said it would be "hard" to suggest the situation is moving in the right direction after overseeing a run of eight league games without a win. The club now sit second from bottom, above Southampton only on goal difference.
Speaking after the loss at the London Stadium, Lampard laid out the challenge facing him - pointing to a lack of transfer funds and the sale of Richarlison over the summer. He said any progress would take time to materialise.
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Asked whether he believed majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri, in attendance for a game during Lampard's tenure for the first time, had seen enough to be convinced the situation could change, the 44-year-old said he could not second guess the billionaire.
On whether there were signs of progress, Lampard responded: "It would be hard for me to sit here and talk about the right direction in terms of recent results. I've said it before games recently. We stayed up by the skin of our teeth last year. We were five points shy of safety with not many games to go. I said the other day I think we would maybe stay where we are and someone gave me a second question and said is that competitive enough talk, as such?
"But for me if you are in a club where, over recent years, the club has moved downwards with serious investment, the environment now, the conditions now are that we don't have that investment and we sold our number nine and we are trying to rebuild. That doesn't mean that straight away you will start climbing straight away. It means that you are going to have to dig in as a club and I am prepared to dig in."
On the performance against West Ham, which also started the match in the bottom three, Lampard said he was pleased with how the game started but returned to the lack of creativity and ruthlessness that is undermining Everton's attempts to climb the table.
He said: "I was disappointed in the result, particularly when we had major control of the game in between both boxes. To lose 2-0 is obviously disappointing but we had a lot of possession, the game went a lot of the way we wanted it to go - particularly up to the 20th minute or so.
"The stadium was quiet, we had the ball and it came down to, probably an issue for us recently, of if we are not going to be clinical enough, not be dynamic enough, not tough enough, in the final third you always have a possibility, particularly with a good team like West Ham of good individuals, of conceding and it changes the feeling of the game."
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