Dyche's Full Reaction To Aston Villa Loss

Sean Dyche believes the "fine margins" continue to hurt Everton after their 3-2 defeat at Aston Villa on Saturday night.

The Blues were 2-0 ahead in the West Midlands thanks to first-half goals from Dwight McNeil and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. But, for the second match in a row, they were pegged back and ultimately left empty-handed.

At 2-1 up and 3-2 behind, the visitors had glorious chances to hit the back of the net again through Calvert-Lewin, while errors at the other end were punished by Villa.

Dyche, already without full-backs Seamus Coleman and Nathan Patterson and central defender Jarrad Branthwaite, was also forced to reshuffle his backline once again when, leading 1-0, Vitalii Mykolenko was forced off through illness.

The Blues boss lamented another match where, after a performance with positives, his side were left to rue the key moments that are too often not going in their favour.

Watch Dyche's full post-match interview to evertontv here, and read his reaction in full below.

Your reaction to our 3-2 defeat to Aston Villa?

Incredibly frustrated in a different way. The last one [Bournemouth] was head-scratching because you see seven, eight minutes of madness. Today wasn’t like that. Obviously, it was hard to take with the full-back situation and another one [Mykolenko] coming out of the side with illness during the game which was hard to take during that stage.

We reshuffled and reorganised the best we could and then we concede a soft goal when 2-0 up. And then the big change in the game comes from a brilliant chance [from Calvert-Lewin at 2-1].

If that goes in, the whole stadium changes, the mood changes. It’s not easy to say but you fancy yourself to go and win it. I fancied it at the stage because it was a great move and a great chance and then they go up the other end and score from a mistake, and at the minute we are getting punished for everything that goes into our box. Everything that looks like trouble, ends up with trouble. That’s something we’ve got to change, quite obviously.

You’ve spoken about the need to put in a full performance to win games but what positives can you take from the goals and chances we created?

Look, the full-back situation has been tough, getting the team out there and picking them up from what happened last time but I thought the reaction was good. The tactical reaction was good in the first half: absorbing pressure, slowing them down and then breaking when we could. We did that really well.

Like I said, we lost our full-back which was not ideal. We finished the half in pretty solid form and started the next half in solid form and have a big chance. At the end of the day, we can debate it all we want but goals change games. Even at 3-2, we hit the bar. It’s good play from Dom, he fights the lad off, it’s a great chance and we hit the bar. Unfortunately, at the minute the fine margins are really hurting us, because you can see it at the moment, every mistake is getting punished and every time we have a chance to punish someone else, we haven’t done it.

That’s my responsibility as manager and the players’ responsibility as a collective, so the work continues.

What's your message to your players?

A famous manager called Jimmy Sirrel said, ‘It’s the same oars and same canoe, so keep rowing'. I said to them, ‘Lads, it’s about us. It’s about the collective. We’ve been in some really tough situations that you won’t know. Our supporters know – and we’ve come through it'. It’s another tough situation. It’s another massive challenge.

It’s our responsibility, starting with me, to come through it. That’s the next challenge. Park all the injuries; park all the excuses about us and go to challenge ourselves to win football matches. 

That’s what we have to do – quite obviously. More killer instinct in one box and more killer instinct in the other, make sure we keep clean sheets and make sure we take our chances.

It sounds easy. It’s quite obviously not that easy, but that’s the responsibility that I have, my coaching team and the players.

Mykolenko illness – how is he?

It’s just a general illness. I won’t know until the illness shows itself, but he felt ill, so he felt he had to come off.

Two games next week – another opportunity? And praise for fans...

We’ll get out there what we can and the players we can. We’ll hope for a better outcome and work for a better outcome, that’s for sure.

I must the say, the fans were great again today. A lot of question marks and all that business over myself and some things I’ve said, which have been completely misquoted. I don’t know where that story came from, but it did.

They were terrific again today. They were in good voice and trying to get behind us. They’re seeing a team give their lot, but at the minute, we’re not getting on the right side of the margin. That’s what I’ve got to correct. That’s what we’ve got to correct.

Players missing today. Will they feature next week?

I think it’s improbable, but we’ll see how we go on Monday.