Sean Dyche said Everton cannot continue to allow performances to collapse in response to his side conceding important goals.
The Blues boss said he was “very disappointed” by the outcome of a damaging 4-1 defeat at home to Newcastle United in which Everton let in three goals in nine brutal minutes.
The team, spurred on by a sensational atmosphere at Goodison Park, had started brightly but failed to make its early dominance pay. But after falling behind to Callum Wilson’s first half goal, Everton rarely looked like finding a way past the Premier League’s most stubborn defence.
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The best opportunity came when Dominic Calvert-Lewin dinked the ball over an onrushing Nick Pope on the stroke of half-time, only to have his celebrations halted by the offside flag.
Everton clung on in the second half, surviving through an important James Tarkowski block and an incredible Jordan Pickford save, both from Joe Willock. But when Joelinton nodded in the second it sparked a wretched collapse, with Willock and Jacob Murphy contributing to the disaster.
Speaking after the game, Dyche said: “I’m disappointed, very disappointed, in the end. I thought in the first half we did everything that I wanted. Other than conceding, we did everything that I thought was right for a performance against a good side in Newcastle. The mix of our play, the energy, the pressing. I thought it was all there other than the goal, which I thought we could have prevented earlier in the move. We scored a ‘near-goal’ with a fine bit of play just before half-time and then we started the second half bright. Then as soon as the second goes in, which is a really poor goal defensively, it is how quickly the game gets away and we can’t let that happen. It happened against Fulham, when the whole performance changed on one goal, and it happened again tonight so we have got to correct that very quickly.”
The collapse was the third capitulation of the calendar year, with Brighton and Hove Albion inflicting a 4-1 defeat on what was then Frank Lampard’s side in January and then Fulham winning 3-1 in the most recent game at Goodison Park.
Asked how he prevented similar scenes in the five games in which Everton’s Premier League fate rests, Dyche said: “It is more about us continuing doing what we are doing and we just lost the format that we were working to very quickly and we can’t do that.”
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