Carlo Ancelotti insists he must continue improving as a manager to keep pace with today’s fast-evolving football.
Italian Ancelotti’s Everton team will enter the final phase of the Premier League season very much a live contender to qualify for European football.
To capitalise on a promising position – Everton are eighth but with a game in hand on all the sides above them and only three points behind fifth – the manager reckons his team need to get better on two counts.
Everton, insists Ancelotti, have the ability to be sharper in possession.
Additionally, there is a capacity to retain optimum concentration from game to game and eradicate the slips which have prevented a challenge higher up the table.
And Ancelotti, three times a Champions League winning manager, maintains his own development is part of Everton’s growth process.
“You can improve, personally, and you have to improve,” Ancelotti told evertonfc.com.
“Football is changing, it changed a lot in the past and will change a lot in future.
“There are a lot of situations where you can get better and it is the same for the squad.
“After the game, you think about everything that happened on the pitch, the substitutions, what you could do and didn’t do – what you did well.
“This is a discussion you need to have with your staff.
“But not immediately after the game because you are too hot.
“The adrenaline stays in my body a long time, at least 12 hours more [following full-time].
“If the game was tough and exciting – like Tottenham [5-4 win in FA Cup] – for example, the night after, for me, is really difficult to sleep.
“I stay awake a long time.
“You have to wait a little bit – the day after you can have the right discussion with the staff about what happened.”
Ancelotti took charge of Everton in December 2019 and boasts the highest win percentage of any permanent Goodison Park boss since Howard Kendall 34 years ago.
The current manager has won 28 – 49 per cent – and drawn 10 of 57 matches.
Kendall won 54 per cent – 183 – of 338 games in the first of his three spells, between 1981 and 1987.
Everton’s away form under Ancelotti is transformed, with 29 points from 14 games.
But with Crystal Palace visiting Goodison on Monday, the most pressing concern is to breathe new life into fortunes at home.
Everton have won five and drawn two of 14 games in L4 and had a relatively barren time of it at their own ground since the turn of the year.
That short-term objective, claims Ancelotti, feeds into the longer term aim of producing competitive performances as a rule.
“We have to improve the consistency, we are a little bit up and down – although, less than in the past," said Ancelotti.
"Also, we can improve the quality of our football.
“We want more control of the game and more efficiency in possession, this is the technical aspect.
“The other aspect is the mental consistency, to be at a high level in every match.
“Also, to move forward, you always have to work to try to improve the squad.
“If you improve your squad, it is another part of improving yourself.”
