Everton’s early pre-season focus has been about creating a squad that is stronger and capable of playing with more intensity - both going forward and in defence.
Amid the injury chaos that blighted the end of the last campaign, Frank Lampard repeatedly expressed his desire to create a team that is more “robust”. That can be achieved, in part, by signings - with James Tarkowski representing the arrival of a centre back who has played more than 30 Premier League games in each of the past five seasons.
Significant attention is also being paid to strengthening the current players, first team coach Chris Jones told the ECHO. And in a fascinating overview of the club’s approach to the first weeks of pre-season he highlighted Dominic Calvert-Lewin as one of several players to have impressed.
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Jones was brought in by Lampard after he was hired as Blues boss in January. The respected operator has a wealth of experience at the top of football. He was appointed reserve team fitness coach at Chelsea in 2006 and, after being promoted to the first team staff, he worked with Carlo Ancelotti, Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho and Guus Hiddink during a period in which the Stamford Bridge side clinched the Champions League, three Premier League titles, three FA Cups, one UEFA Cup and a League Cup.
Jones moved across to Derby County to support Lampard then returned to Chelsea before teaming up with him again at Finch Farm. The pair arrived on Merseyside to a squad plagued by injuries to key players from Calvert-Lewin and Yerry Mina to Fabian Delph. Further knocks to the likes of Ben Godfrey and on-loan Donny van de Beek also undermined Everton’s efforts to avoid relegation - though the drop was eventually escaped so memorably in the penultimate game of the season with the dramatic comeback win over Crystal Palace.
Speaking exclusively to the ECHO during a break in Everton’s training camp just outside Washington DC, Jones said his staff were glad to have a full pre-season with the squad, meaning they could now start fresh with the players and build them up towards next season. Last season they had no choice other than to simply manage the injury situation they inherited.
He said: “It’s nice to have the players from the start of pre-season so we can start to mould them the way we would like to. A good pre-season can see a player through most of the year. If you don’t start well, it’s disjointed, then it becomes a lot harder and the season can go by - if you pick up a decent injury early-on it can drag through the season. Players then don’t always get up to full fitness so it’s good to have them from the start.”
Training in the US has been tough on the players so far, with double sessions in conditions that have been sweltering despite breaks to avoid the worst of the heat. The priority is fitness over form for now, a point Lampard re-iterated after the defeat to Arsenal in the club’s first game of the summer.
Asked by the ECHO what he had hoped to get from that friendly, held in Baltimore, he said: "Fitness and conditioning. We are behind Arsenal, they have played a couple of games before this. This is our first official game so I understood that. You could see that in the way they started with a strong team and made later subs than us so I needed a balanced evening from my players, 45 minutes each for most of them. I was pleased with the application, pleased with the fitness and pleased with elements of the game and not so pleased [with others].”
The initial weeks of training have been about building fitness, Jones said - and typically through playing football, as images from training have repeatedly demonstrated.
Jones explained: “We use football as the main tool to get fit. We manipulate the size of the areas on different days, that’s a really good way, we find, to work with different components of fitness. So mainly football-based exercises and, with that, isolated running drills.”
Obtaining fitness through playing football is an approach that has evolved in recent years according to Jones, who believes it is safer for players to start with game-based schemes: “Managers would like to have players running early on and then building up as they go but we find, in my experience, players become more robust when you start with football and they are used to all the movements they are going to be doing."
Asked what can be done to help a player become more “robust”, he said mixing up the size of the playing area being trained in helped, and added: “It’s piecing together all the components, so the capacity to run and to be able to tolerate high intensity training.”
Jones said the track facilities at the club’s training base created opportunities to develop the approach, adding: “It’s creating a training method which leads to how we want to play on the pitch, which is with high speed, pressing up the pitch and being able to defend with intensity as well… A lot of the work that we do is so the players are confident when a game comes they can deliver that in the game. For example, if we are attacking at speed and there is a transition and we lose the ball, we want to be confident the player can defend in transition and run at high speed to get back into position, so we do the work that prepares them for that.”
Recruitment is another significant area that will allow Lampard to build a more “robust” squad - and one that he can develop tactically. He suggested he started with five at the back against Arsenal partly out of necessity, telling the post-match press conference: "I would like to be a bit more flexible because at the minute we have to probably play a back three because of the personnel on this trip - a lot of centre halves and in midfield we don't really have natural holding midfielders to perhaps play three in midfield like Arsenal did tonight [on Saturday]. So there are things that are a work in progress at the minute. My job is to focus on those parts - where can we bring in players to improve but also, in training, where can we drill?”
Of those in the current squad who could have a major impact on the coming season is Calvert-Lewin - and Jones is pleased with what he has seen so far. The 25-year-old was responsible for the landmark goal that secured Everton’s Premier League survival but otherwise endured a miserable campaign plagued by injury after starting with the promise of three goals in the first three league games.
Ahead of a season in which he hopes to mount a challenge for a spot in England’s World Cup squad he is one of several players said to have hit the ground running since training resumed on July 4. Praising Calvert-Lewin’s application, Jones said: “Dominic is looking good. He had a tough season last year in terms of his injury. He came in really good at the end with the important goal that he scored for us. I think he looks like the athlete that he wants to be now, and through the rest of the pre-season we will be looking to develop that.”
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