Sean Dyche insisted he will pay no attention to the Premier League table until the end of the season after Everton fell into the bottom three.
The Blues earned a battling point at in-form Crystal Palace despite going down to 10 men. But a win for Leicester City pushed Dyche’s side into the relegation zone with six games left.
Speaking after the match, Dyche said he could take positives from the performance and the result - particularly the return of key striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin. And he said he would operate on Everton’s own terms and not get lost in the implications of the results around the league this weekend.
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Everton and Palace played out a goalless draw at Selhurst Park. Both sides had chances and Mason Holgate’s sending off with 10 minutes to go led to a frantic finale as the hosts pushed for a winner. Everton survived the onslaught to end a run of consecutive defeats.
Asked for his thoughts on the result, Dyche agreed there were positives he could take from the match. He said: “Generally this is a tough place to come and play and they are the in-form side. They have been scoring goals freely over the last three games, had three wins, so to keep them to minimal chances [was a positive].
"They had one chance from distance and Jordan [Pickford] made a really good save but other than that we kept that side of it pretty clean from our point of view. We defended well and the keeper and the two centre halves played well, I thought, and the commitment to it at the end was good because you go down to 10 and that is not easy. They were flashing corners in but we dealt with it very well.”
Dyche said he was pleased with the reaction from the team after Everton suffered defeats at Manchester United and at home to Fulham that saw them stumble back into trouble.
Dyche explained: “The Fulham one was more disappointing for me, the second half we just didn’t do the basics, didn’t find that edge to our play. It was important we responded to that and we somewhat did today. I still think we can be better, but we are coming down here to an in-form team with a few injuries and a suspension and we have taken the game on.”
Asked about the state of the Premier League table and whether he would pay attention to Everton dropping into the bottom three, he said: “I don’t really bother with it until the end. I have been in this [football] since I was 16. The most important table is the one at the end of the season. Nothing means anything apart from that one, that is the most important one. So my focus stays on that. The bit in-between is the performance levels, the fitness of the players, the organisation, the strategy and the process that we go through to make sure that table looks right for us.”
Ultimately, he believes this was a day on which he could draw positive as he plots to keep Everton up: “If you are in a normal season and you come down here and keep a clean sheet and a point I think you would probably go ‘yeah OK, we will take that’ so you can’t just change all of the goalposts, whilst knowing that you have got to try and win these games."
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