Leon Osman believes Everton’s 'characters' and 'leaders' need to stand up and make themselves counted as the club aims to move out of the relegation zone.
After a week of off the pitch turmoil, which saw majority shareholder Farhad Moshirir write an open letter to supporters and appear on talkSPORT, Everton are preparing to return to Premier League action against Southampton this weekend.
Saturday’s match at Goodison Park will be the first time Everton have played at home since they were beaten 4-1 by Brighton & Hove Albion. Frank Lampard’s side were booed off that night, while shouts of 'sack the board' were heard during the second-half and after the full-time whistle.
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While Lampard - who was appointed a year ago - has overseen just one win in his past ten Premier League matches with Everton dragged into a relegation battle for the second successive campaign.
But as the Blues prepare to return home and try and end a run of three straight losses at Goodison, Osman has detailed how Lampard’s side need to stick together and realise only they can get themselves out of trouble.
“You need characters and you need leaders. Some of the characters will need to be leaders and some of the characters will just need to be fun,” he told the ECHO.
“Some of the characters will need to be light-hearted and fun for a bit of a distraction and to take the pressure off. So there are different characters needed.
“So hopefully our squad has got them all because as I have said it is a difficult time and they need to stick together. They need to be positive.
“Even members of staff can be crucial at times like this. But we have shown we are capable of getting performances and results and bouncing back from situations. We lost to Wolves in the worst manner of losing a game.
“The last minute at home on the counter-attack and then bounced back and went to Man City and dug deep and got a real fighting result and performance. The team have shown they are capable of doing it and they just need to go out on the pitch and do it now.”
Before he added: “You have got to not necessarily shut out the noise, but turn to each other and realise you are all in this together and rely on each other.
“Then when you do that you can go out and put a performance in and you can charge around the field and get the crowd onside.
“Once you do that the game becomes a lot easier. Obviously an early goal helps as well, but first and foremost the team has got to stick together.”
After securing a point away at Manchester City by playing three at the back, Lampard moved to a 4-3-3 system for the game against Roberto De Zerbi’s side, before returning to a 5-3-2 set-up for the FA Cup third round defeat to Manchester United on Friday.
And although Osman can understand why the Blues boss wants to play attacking football, the former England international believes the time has come for Lampard to put his 'gameplan on the backburner' and play a more 'effective football'.
“What we want is not to concede goals and create goals and score goals at the other end. It seems really easy so the very basics is make sure to perform in both penalty areas,” he said.
“At the moment, we are quite pretty in the middle of the pitch, but unfortunately we are not effective in the areas that count. So that is the first thing that needs to be identified.
“Sometimes you have got to put a gameplan on the backburner to get results. You have to play effective football and at the minute we are not.
“We are not playing effective football and at the minute we have a guy, as big as Dominic is, we don’t really cross the ball enough. There is 40 or 50 yards between him and someone winning a knockdown or a second ball.
“I know what Frank is trying to do with the team, and we would all love to love back in three years time and be a team playing the way Brighton did, but we might be getting close to going back to that period of how we finished last season.”
Leon Osman was speaking to the Liverpool ECHO at the launch of the William Hill’s new shop in Liverpool Central.
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