Frank Lampard has revealed that captain Seamus Coleman faces a race to be fit for the 2022/23 opener at home to Chelsea while detailing the changes that Everton need to make to ensure they’re not involved in another relegation battle next season.
Coleman, who turns 34 in October and was described by Lampard as being “the best man I’ve ever met” in the dressing room after the Blues secured their top flight status with a dramatic 3-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace in their final home game of last season, has travelled to the USA as part of a 32-player squad but is not currently training, with Allan and Andros Townsend – continuing his rehabilitation following an anterior cruciate ligament injury – also included in the party.
Lampard said: “Seamus Coleman is not training at the minute because of an injury, hopefully he’ll be fit very early in the season and he’s our captain and our leader while Allan’s coming back from an injury and should be back midway through the week. I just want everyone to be involved, so we’re all here.”
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It understood that Coleman underwent surgery to correct an issue in the inguinal area. And Lampard manager added: “Seamus will hopefully be fit on the brink of the season so we’ll see if that allows him to be ready for those first games. We know Seamus, he’ll surprise you all the time, because of his dedication and his body and his desire to play for this club, we saw that last season, and he was really hanging on in there with the injury that he had so we’ve sorted that out.
“It’s an opportunity for others. Patts ( Nathan Patterson ) has got over his injury, we had so many injuries last year, it’s something that we also have to tackle in terms of what are the reasons.
“Some of the injuries you can’t explain, some you think ‘can we be better to try and minimise them?’ but we need to try and do that and it’s a real collective as well. Injuries mean opportunities and Patts can hopefully take that.”
After not banishing the spectre of a first relegation in 71 years until five minutes from the end of their penultimate fixture and still recording the joint lowest equivalent points total in the club’s 134-year Football League/Premier League history, Lampard is also determined that Everton don’t find themselves in a similar position next term. He said: “It’s my first pre-season, when you come in mid-season there are a lot of priorities, the next game and the next game and results and we all saw that unravel.
“Now it’s about ‘how can we be better to not be in that position again?’ It starts here with the hard work. We can’t lose a day, we can’t lose a moment. I have to say the players have been great since we’ve been back.
“The first training session this morning, the players were spot-on. It was really hot, a hard session, and the attitude was exactly what I’d want so I’m very happy so far.
“That’s how it has to be. A team has to be together from the first moments to the end and I thought we saw in our run-in last season there is a togetherness here and it wasn’t just the players, it was the whole club.
“It’s something we have to take as our responsibility, to be together, to perform, to show desire and for that we need to be a fit team. We need to be a team with a big capacity to run.
“An Everton team has to have that because it has to show energy, it has to show desire, so the building blocks are here in this trip and building into the season.”
As well as a requirement for stamina, Lampard is also eager to use the trip as an opportunity to implement his own footballing philosophy into the team. When he first arrived at Everton at the end of January, the new Blues boss called upon his players to “enjoy the football” but soon had to adopt a more pragmatic approach for a relegation dogfight with Manchester United and Chelsea both beaten at Goodison Park despite the hosts recording possession figures of just 32% and 22% in the respective fixtures.
Lampard said: “Now it’s my chance to make it my team as such or how I want my team to look. That’s how we work on the training ground and how we can set those ideas in from the beginning of pre-season and also the personnel of how we try and build and mould the squad and make changes to make it improve and feel like something that can take the club forward and change the direction of results from last season in general but also in performance and style of play.
“We’ll do it in steps. We can’t expect next year we’re going to go to the moon, it won’t be that process from where we were last year, it will be a process of what’s the first thing we can improve and then keep on improving and that’s where we’re at now.”
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