James Tarkowski hopes the Sydney sun can help reignite Everton’s season following a 'tough week' before the break for the World Cup.
Everton are currently one place above the Premier League relegation zone — ahead of 18th-placed Nottingham Forest by a single point — having lost five of their last seven games in all competitions.
Back-to-back defeats to Bournemouth - the first coming in the Carabao Cup - was a far from ideal way of heading into a six-week break. The results also marked a low point for Everton's season after some early signs of promise.
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But Tarkowski believes his side is putting the 'building blocks in place' for a move up the table and believes the 3-0 win over Crystal Palace last month is the level of consistency that his Everton side need to achieve heading into the second part of the campaign.
"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."
Before he added: "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."
After arriving in Australia on Wednesday night, Tarkowski and his team-mates have also taken time seeing the Sydney sights and spent time meeting fan groups.
"Everywhere we go it just seems to keep growing and growing the amount of fans we see," he told ABC Sport when asked about the trip.
"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."
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