Sports Evolve
It is Frank Lampard’s goal to improve Everton’s away record and prevent anyone from deeming them a “soft touch.”
It is the worst performance in the Premier League for the 2021/22 season for the Blues to have collected up to six points away from Goodison Park.
At Newcastle United and Southampton, the club’s new manager has lost both of his away matches so far.
Lampard was grilled once again about the disparity between Everton’s home and away results before of their trip to Tottenham Hotspur on Monday night.
During his playing days, the boss was asked if he thought the Blues were a “soft touch.”
When it comes to the club’s recent away record, he’s not worried about it, and he knows it will take time to fix while he’s there.
Lampard said: “I suppose I didn’t absolutely study Everton’s away form over the years in a long-term way.
“But I never thought that Everton were a soft touch, it’s one of the things I always actually would have leant the other way on.
“I suppose maybe a lot of that would have been coming to Goodison and feeling a team that were generally aggressive by nature. Fast closing down, closing spaces. Of course the landscape changes a bit when you travel, with that.
“I’m not too concerned about historically, I definitely don’t want to be a soft touch as a team. I answered it in one of the previous questions about the away form, it’s also something that won’t necessarily be changed overnight.
“There are reasons why we’re not getting results, I think some of those are confidence or mentality issues, and when I say mentality it’s not a negative thing, it’s just about how we handle games as a group away from home.
“Some of them it’s the structure of the team and how we set up, and that’s certainly my responsibility to get that right. But that’s one that we do work on a bit.
“Having said that if we can get some traction and can get a result, whatever that may be in a positive sense, I think that really helps the change. Because at the minute there’s a feeling throughout the club of going away from home, we may lose this game.
“That’s the first thing we have to broach, if we can broach that with the result then I think we can maybe really start taking that step forward.
“But we don’t want to be a soft touch, for sure.”
When Everton travel to face Tottenham on Monday night, they will be aiming for their second away victory of the Premier League season.
Lampard has discussed his feelings after the Blues’ most recent away setback, and he believes his team has a lot to learn after holding a team meeting.
“Yeah, from Southampton there is. Southampton was a game we didn’t play as I want us to play, and the players knew that.
“We had a meeting two days after that game to quickly see [what went wrong], and I think the players understood.
“Whether it would have won or lost us that game, or made a difference, I know for sure we could have changed our performance levels in that game – so the players know.
“Tactically there were issues with the team as the game went on that I certainly spoke about afterwards and that’s something that we must improve going forward.”
