Everton manager Frank Lampard did not want to make comparisons with his side’s latest defeat at Tottenham Hotspur to last season’s horror show as he admitted that they still have plenty of room for improvement.
The Blues were thrashed 5-0 in the corresponding fixture back in March with all the goals coming in the first hour but held their high-flying hosts for a similar time period on this occasion before eventually being beaten 2-0.
Lampard said: “I don’t think it’s a comparison between the two - the facts of the game are if we finish our chances we could be one or two nil up in the first half. We restricted them, considering what Tottenham usually do here, to not much in the first half.
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“The feeling we would have had at half-time in the lead would have been different for us and the manner of the goals... of course every goal you concede is disappointing but Jordan’s an amazing goalkeeper for us so the circumstances of the first goal is what it is and the second one is when we’re pushing to get back into the game to an extent. We were very competitive in the game in the way we played and on another day we take our chances and I think it looks different.
“It’s a reality when you’re one on one on goal but I’m not going to stand here and criticise the players too much to go through and miss a chance. Sometimes the cool head of being there regularly and seeing and feeling it makes you more clinical in those moments, look at Harry Kane, he’s been doing it for years.
“You sometimes see the differences in these games, coming to a Champions League club, when you miss them, they take theirs and sometimes that’s the reality of where we’re at and we want to get to that level where we are more clinical and sometimes on evenings it doesn’t work that way.”
While admitting that his team went into this fixture in much better shape, Lampard insisted that the improvements on their previous visit were largely immaterial to his thought process. He said: “When you progress as a team, and certainly the way I am, it’s still the feeling of a loss.
“In the cold light of day, we can say that we can come here and do a job and can change a formation and have players that can go through the game plan with more consistency. I think we’re there so what’s the next step, to maybe take those chances and start the second half better than what we did today?
“That wasn’t a nice night here last season but that’s long gone and we’ve still come away with no points out of the game. I think we can reflect a little bit but there are things we can tidy up and get better at, that will always be the case.
“I think in reality you can come to Tottenham and lose, it’s a Champions League team who are really strong, but what’s important is that we’re training with consistency and momentum and pick up points going forward and win games that we should be stronger in and show that we’re a stronger team.”
The 44-year-old added: “I haven’t drawn the line between those two games to connect them because I know what we went into that game with. It was a tough moment for us with people that were ill that were playing and I didn’t have the players to change the formation like I did today. It’s when you can’t play with a back five to match up away to stop Tottenham getting the spaces they want.. it was a really difficult night.
“It’s so long gone that now we are in a better position that we can compete at that level. I don’t want to think backwards, I want to think forwards and what today means for us and it’s an opportunity that we could have come here and got something and we didn’t.
“We take that away from us and look forward and make sure that next time we come up in these situations... a bit like Manchester United last week when we conceded two counter-attacks in our own good possession which cost us the game, and today we didn’t take chances that cost us the game and we have to analyse that. Sometimes they’re not the easiest things to analyse because they’re just decisions and moments in the game so it’s not a structural thing of such so that might be part of the process.”
Meanwhile, Lampard was tight-lipped over the decision to award Tottenham a penalty for the opening goal after Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford challenged Kane. He said: “I’m not dodging it, I haven’t seen it. I haven’t got an answer to that and I wouldn’t want to give a wrong answer.”
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