Sean Dyche says he could sense his Everton side were going to throw away their precious 2-0 advantage over Bournemouth today but blamed his players for not doing “the ugly side of the game” to see out what should have been a comfortable victory.
The Blues lost 3-2 in almost incomprehensible fashion having been 2-0 up in the 87th minute, an epic defensive collapse condemning them to a 3-2 defeat that the manager described as the most frustrating of his career.
Fans have pointed to Everton’s loss of momentum when Iliman Ndiaye was withdrawn in favour of Abdoulaye Doucouré shortly before the Cherries scored their first goal but Dyche expressed his annoyance at his failure to get the message across to his players to just do the basics in the closing stages.
“For whatever reason, they scored a goal and we were just looking at each other,” the manager explained afterwards. “Everyone was staring at each other and going: ‘Who is going to do that? Who’s going to win a challenge, who’s going to win that race, who’s going to win that header, and waiting for someone else to do it. And you can’t do that.
“Everyone’s got to make a difference. And they did, for 87 minutes this was a very, very good performance and I was very pleased with the mixture of the play. They [Bournemouth] play quite long, just putting it forward, and we dealt with that. No problem.
“And then after the first goal I could smell it in the air. Not necessarily not winning. But I could smell it, I thought ‘this isn’t right’. And I’m trying to correct them, I’m screaming at them to get their shape, get the wide men tucked in and just do the absolute ugly side of game — play forwards, win your headers, win your tackles, win your races. We didn’t, and they get a win out of nowhere.
“[Getting your message across is] the hardest thing because the [players are] active; they’re out there. A bit of fatigue. The stadium changed quickly because they are going ‘what’s going on here?’ They are always the hardest things to change and to correct, that moment.
“It is always the manager. It is always the manager who takes responsibility. You are looking for your team while they are out there to take responsibility. But it takes character and it takes leadership and it takes people who have been around to smell it. We’re trying to get it on, furiously trying to just play 4-4-1-1 and just play it forwards, that is it.”
Captain Seamus Coleman, starting his first Premier League match of the season after overcoming a calf strain, was equally dumbfounded.
“We really let ourselves down in front of our fans,” he said. “We cannot take our foot off the gas at this level.
“Unfortunately we did that. We cannot be conceding the goals that we did. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror.”