Seamus Coleman vowed that Everton will keep striving to find consistency after conceding the Blues were not good enough in the 2-1 defeat at Southampton.
The visitors went down to a 50th-minute strike from James Ward-Prowse and unfortunate Lucas Digne own goal just after the hour mark at St Mary’s. And although Gylfi Sigurdsson’s injury-time effort gave them a glimmer of hope, the hosts held on to take all three points.
Coleman was frustrated that Everton could not build on last Sunday’s 2-0 success over Bournemouth at Goodison. With Marco Silva’s side still three points off seventh place, though, the Toffees skipper called on his teammates to “move on quickly” and bid to get back to their form between September and November which yielded 16 points from a possible 21.
“We came down here after last week’s performance trying to get back-to-back wins and another positive result,” said Coleman. “Unfortunately, that’s the way it’s going at the minute - we can’t get a run of wins going. It’s very disappointing.
“We are still working very hard to [find consistency]. The fans travel all the way down it and it’s a long way to come and you always want to put in a performance, definitely a battling performance. You can’t play well every week or win every week but you’ve got to give your all and they will accept that.
“It’s not good enough from our point of view but we need to move on quickly and get back on the training pitch and try to finish the season the best we can.”
Everton now turn their attention to next weekend’s FA Cup fourth round tie at Millwall, before travelling to Huddersfield Town in the Premier League on Tuesday 29 January.
Coleman says the Blues are confident with the style boss Silva wants them to play and knows the team can return to the form that saw them mixing it with the top six earlier in the season.
He said: “I think that something as a minimum when you play for this club is that you give your all and I think at times they beat us to second balls which is very disappointing. They deserved the win today and we’ve got to take it on the chin. We need to be very disappointed.
“We have our way of playing and we are confident in that. They had their way of playing today and they were the better team on the day. As I said, not good enough from our point but we need to move on quickly.”
