Duncan Ferguson has explained his substitutions against Aston Villa and again praised his players for their effort at Goodison Park on Saturday.
The Blues fell to another defeat at the weekend thanks to an Emiliano Buendia header late in the first half, with the good feeling around another temporary spell in charge for the popular former striker not being able to pull the side through on this occasion.
The players showed fight and intensity throughout, but were not able to add the quality in the second half to take any of the chances they created.
Everton looked better after they had made a number of substitutions on Saturday, most notably introducing Anthony Gordon into the action who was very impressive once more.
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And Ferguson has now explained the decisions behind each of his changes, with Allan and Tyler Onyango both also being introduced from the bench against Villa.
Ferguson told evertontv : “I love Tyler, I have a lot of history with him and he did well. Doucs [Abdoulaye Doucoure] is a warrior but he had his injury.
“I made the earlier substitutions to change the momentum. Andre [Gomes] had a yellow card… and I wanted to put Allan in there because he has great fighting spirit.
“He’d been off for a week and only trained on Friday but he gave us everything.
“I wanted Anthony to get at them, he gave us legs and I thought he did really well.
“It was a game of few chances in the first half, Villa had a couple but we never really had any. Then a set-piece did us.
“The boys pushed hard in the second half, there was plenty of effort and a few half chances and we should have put one of them in.
"We will go back to work and do all we can to get that result we need."
Everton are now on a short break from action, next playing against Brentford on February 5th in the FA Cup.
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And the caretaker manager knows that it is important to keep the side's fighting spirit up over the course of that time, and there is a lot of work to be done to make sure they can get a result next time out.
“We need to keep everybody galvanised and keep the spirit and fighting mentality there and try our best to get the next result,” Ferguson added.
“I thought our shape against Aston Villa was quite good.
“Every player on that pitch tried their absolute best and that is all you can ask for as a manager. You just want the players to work as hard as they possibly can and I am sure you saw that.
“But we need to work [over the two weeks between games] on trying to get a result. We are the greatest club in the world. We love it so much, don’t we?
“That is why the fans are so passionate, they are local people and love their club. This is an attractive club for somebody.
“But the first thing we need is to get results.”
