Sean Dyche proclaimed that the most-satisfying aspect of Everton’s 5-1 thrashing of Brighton & Hove Albion was the players’ implementing of the special game plan he deployed.
The victory was only Everton’s second away success of the season in the Premier League and moved them out of the relegation zone. The Blues boss said: “I’m not sure I saw it coming myself in terms of the scoreline but I did with the performance as I saw it at Leicester. The scoreline is a big one for any team, particularly on the road.
“There’s been a lot of noise for the last couple of years about Everton as a group playing away but I think we’ve been improving the mentality generally-speaking. There have been a couple that got away from us but there have been some stronger performances away from home and more committed performances I think and tonight paid us back on what we did at Leicester.”
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Dyche added: “I enjoyed the delivery of the tactics. If you get it right everybody lauds you and if you get it wrong, maybe you still got the right tactics but you haven’t performed it.
“They have done tonight, they’ve taken it on. We did some work with them, they were very open-minded to it and they’ve gone and delivered it.
“That’s really pleasing because that’s the whole point of coaching, the whole point of managing, to give them a format to work from and for them to take it on and go and deliver it. The players deserve a lot of credit because they have taken it on but not only that but taken it on with aplomb, the way they’ve gone about it.
“Brighton play a very particular way, they play two boxes in the middle of the pitch, they pop it and slide it and look to play clever ‘round the corners’. I thought we quelled that and were very patient with it.”
The 51-year-old continued: “Sometimes that’s difficult because everyone wants you to take the game on and sometimes people can think that you’re not but you are. You’ve just got to be patient and I think the patience and the focus and the ability once you break it to go and act on the transition was really pleasing for me.
“It was delivered so well in the first half, they had a better spell in the second half, you expected that, I think we all expected that. I said to the players ‘they’re probably going to quicken the tempo, play more direct from crossing positions – not back to front – but getting it wide to the box’ which they did, but we held strong to that and Jordan made some really fine saves, I always thought if they did that, we’d have moments where it would open up for us and it did.”
Asked what type of message he though the display sent out, Dyche said: “People will be out there thinking ‘right, there’s life in that team’ but we’ve never lost sight of that. It just reminds the players, the work ethic, the commitment to the cause and the connectivity of the group.
“I know there’s quality here, I’ve always believed in this quality and I’ve said it many times. But talking about it doesn’t win you a game, it’s the collective mentality to go and deliver everything you’ve got and I think we did that at Leicester where we were very frustrated to not come away with three points but we got our reward for carrying on that mentality here with many good individual performances and a very good team performance against a team who – rightly so – have been applauded for the way they have gone about things this season as they’ve been very confident, especially at home, so if you put that in the melting pot, it’s a very pleasing performance.”
The Everton manager added: “It’s nice for the fans who have been terrific ever since I got here but at the end of the day it’s more about getting points on the table. There was the feel-good factor of a very important away win but I reminded the lads afterwards that it’s only another step and I said that after Arsenal and there are three more big steps we’ve got to take.”
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