As good as the performance was against Chelsea and as massively important as the result was, it’s just one game ticked off and now Everton must finally do the business away from Goodison Park with back-to-back away matches against Leicester City and Watford. The elephant in the room this season is our away for which has been terrible.
It was before Frank Lampard came and has continued to be so under him. They’ve got to try and find a solution, what’s going on?
Everton remain in the relegation zone and my friends and family, some of them are struggling with sleeping. They’re looking at the league table at 4 o’clock in the morning to see if it’s changed! You can examine it and the fixtures so many times, you get muddled up. That’s what fans do, because they care.
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It’s a situation we don’t want to be in but we’re worried a lot. What we’ve seen from these last few performances from the players is that they also care and they’re prepared to put in the kind of effort that we demand from them.
We need to look at what we’re doing differently. Is there anything we can do better in terms of planning these trips?
Discussions take place and it happened to me when I was at another club. We said: “We’re going through a bad run here, is there anything we’re doing wrong here?” You question everything, whether it’s going down on the train or flying – which is quicker but you’re hanging around in the airports.
When I started in football, there were probably only four or five members of the backroom staff maximum doing analysis but by the time I finished it was about 32 per club. They’re looking at that 0.01% difference that can come from having a drink five minutes later.
Tiny margins can make alter things and it might sound silly but these are the kind of conversations that Frank might be having. Are the players eating the right things, should we take our own chef?
Are we getting to the hotel too late? Are we getting there too early? When are we eating our pre-match meals? Are we going for a walk at the right times? I remember some of the older players used to take their own mattress to try and ensure they got a good night’s sleep.
This away form hasn’t been good all season, the statistics speak for themselves and it’s embarrassing. That’s why we’re in this position.
We had six cup finals and now there are five and we don’t want to be looking at other teams, we need to be focussing on our own performances and results. Who would have thought that Burnley would have got 10 points out of 12 but it’s still in our own hands.
Given that we only played Leicester a couple of weeks ago, Frank will have learned a lot about how Brendan Rodgers’ side sets up. We got overrun a lot of the time at Goodison Park where they had a lot of possession.
Unless it’s a cup game, as a player, it doesn’t often happen that you play against the same opposition so closely but I used to like it. You knew what you were getting, I knew what the opposition winger’s strengths and weaknesses were and it was fresh in your mind.
It works both ways and Leicester can tweak their game as well but we’ll have fresh data on a quality opponent and they’ve still got to focus on Europe with the semi-final against Roma before we go there.
As fans, we turn out in great numbers away from home too and sell out everywhere we go but that desire and willingness from the players is lacking and if we concede, our heads seem to go down as a team. I very much doubt would have been the case against Chelsea, if we’d have gone 1-0 down then the home fans would continue to cheer the boys on for the full 90 minutes to try and get something out of the game but unfortunately away – even though are fans are still there in great numbers and cheering – the players don’t seem to react in that way and Frank will be demanding more from them to find a solution.
