Everton defender James Tarkowski hopes a timely break for the World Cup — and some time in the Australian sun — can help his club respond after some recent Premier League struggles.
The six-week break has come at a good time for the Toffees, who find themselves in 17th position and just one point clear of the bottom three on the eve of the World Cup.
A healthy squad short of only four players who have headed to Qatar — England's Jordan Pickford and Conor Coady, Belgium's Amadou Onana and Senegal's Idrissa Gana Gueye — has travelled to Sydney for friendly matches against Western Sydney Wanderers and Ange Postecoglou's Celtic.
But Tarkowski and his teammates have also taken time seeing the Sydney sights, will head to the SCG on Saturday to watch Australia and England's second ODI, and have met with Everton fan groups who have not enjoyed a visit from their team since the Tim Cahill-led side came in 2010.
"Everywhere we go it just seems to keep growing and growing the amount of fans we see," Tarkowski told ABC Sport.
"We've come to the other side of the world and the fans are out in numbers, coming to meet with us and engage with us. So we're very fortunate."
The setting is a long way removed from Bournemouth's Vitality Stadium, where Everton last week lost two matches in five days in the League Cup and Premier League, to a total aggregate score of 7-1.
Those results marked a low point for Everton's season after some early signs of promise, but while such moments have historically sent Toffees teams of recent seasons spiralling, Tarkowski hopes this one can be kept in context.
"I think it's important for the team to realise that last week was just a once-off week in what has been a reasonably good start to the season," he said.
"We've got to start putting the building blocks back in place to start performing well again once we get back to the Premier League.
"It was a tough week last week, but we're looking forward to getting back after this break and getting back to business."
The twin losses in Bournemouth came only a few weeks after one of the best Everton performances in years, a swashbuckling 3-0 win over Crystal Palace that convinced Goodison Park Frank Lampard's team was heading in the right direction.
Such an alarming change in direction has concerned fans, many still smarting from last season's dangerously close brush with relegation, but a heavily-congested table has Tarkowski looking up, rather than down.
"I think if you look at that Crystal Palace performance, and how good it was, if we can get to that level consistently we can start to move up the table.
"All teams want to strive for consistency, and we've just struggled to find that so far this season. We've had one or two good performances and then one or two not so good.
"We're still in a learning process, a lot of new faces and new players, a new style of play. It's all part of learning when you have these bad weeks and hopefully, going into the second part of the season, we'll learn from our lessons and we'll start to get those consistent performances together.
"It's quite a tight table for now, a couple of wins and you're up into the top half. There's opportunity there for us, but we do have to go out there and perform."
Tarkowski was an off-season addition to the Toffees' ranks, and alongside fellow new arrival Coady has helped rebuild an Everton defence that has proven largely unreliable for years.
He and Coady have formed one of the toughest and most uncompromising centre-defensive pairings in the Premier League, though while they have conceded the joint fourth-fewest goals in the League, many of the underlying numbers — such as shots faced and expected goals against — have Everton sitting firmly at the wrong end.
As a result it has been a challenge to gauge just how much the team has improved in Lampard's first full season in charge, though Tarkowski says he and his fellow defenders are keeping things simple.
"The most important thing is how many goals we concede.
"I think before last week we were pretty much up there with some of the best teams in the league for goals conceded.
"There are a lot of stats based on lots of different things, which can show a certain picture but not everything.
"We don't over-focus on anything in particular aside from how many goals we concede really."
While Tarkowksi is enjoying his time in Sydney, part of him undoubtedly still wishes he was in Qatar with the England squad, one he can consider himself unlucky to have missed out on.
He says he will still be following his compatriots closely once the World Cup kicks off — but he predicts the trophy may find its home elsewhere.
"There's some good sides out there, isn't there?
"I saw the Brazil squad get announced, that looks strong. France are missing a couple of important players so maybe that will affect them.
"Maybe Brazil [to win the World Cup] after seeing their squad."
