Sean Dyche highlighted the latest area for improvement after his side held out for a vital win over Brentford.
The Blues boss was pleased with parts of Everton’s performance and acknowledged it was unlikely his team would dominate the full 90 minutes. But his desire for continued improvement remained clear after the final whistle.
Everton were rampant in the opening stages, taking the lead through Dwight McNeil after just 35 seconds. They then created a host of further chances before looking in danger of becoming overwhelmed during a nervy second 45 minutes. Addressing the issues that prevented them from holding any control in that second half is now key to his plans, he said.
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Dyche said he was pleased with a result that pulls Everton clear of the bottom three and offers the latest swing in momentum in the bottom half of the table. Earlier this week he had described 1-0 as a manager’s ‘favourite’ scoreline.
Asked how satisfying the result against Brentford was, he responded: “It is satisfying today for different reasons. The first half I thought we were very good. Arguably we should have gone in further in front with the chances we created. We have been talking about how we can be effective and I thought we were. And then in the second half fair play to them. They were 12 unbeaten in the Premier League, I think they have had six wins in that as well. They are a good outfit, we know that. They have matured into an outfit and they came back into it.”
Of the improvement he is hoping to drill into his team next, he added: “The only thing I would say is it got nervy but we gave them too many chances, there were too many turnovers, too many simple turnovers to give them a chance to keep coming at us rather than dealing with the ball better ourselves.
"But that being said you have got to find ways of winning football matches and it is very difficult in the Premier League to dominate 90 minutes, to dominate 95 minutes, whatever is played, so you expect teams to have spells. On this occasion they had a very strong half, we lost our way, but the resilience of the side, the shape of the side, and that is growing all the time, and doing the hard yards and - add in a moment of fine goalkeeping - you come away with a nice 1-0 win.”
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