18 March 2023 , 22:31
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Sean Dyche admitted he’d love to play eye-catching football - but for now he’s happy to pick up points any way they come.
Everton twice fell behind at Chelsea, first to Joao Felix and then Kai Havertz from the penalty spot, but they pulled the home side back through Abdoulaye Doucoure and then at the death through substitute Ellis Simms.
Dyche said: “Finding ways to affect football, that’s a big belief of mine. We’d all like to play the beautiful game, all of us including me, but you’ve got to find ways of affecting the opposition, finding ways of scoring goals and creating goals, and of course defending.
“That’s what we’re working on. It feels like a very good fight-back at a place where it’s hard to come and get results and points and wins. That mentality is improving all the time and it was on show as the game went on. The resilience of the side and desire of the side to not be so affected.
“We’re beginning to find a way of not being so disappointed. A goal goes in, well, it’s gone. We’ll talk about it the next day, not while the game is going on.”
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Dyche also praised Simms and revealed a chat with the striker in midweek. He added: “He still has a lot to improve. He came up to me in the week and asked me what he can improve on and I said, ‘What do you think?’
“He gave me four things and I said, ‘You’re right’. It’s taking action. A lot of these players know what they have to do, it’s just taking ownership of it and doing it and tonight was a good example of that. His physicality — he’s quick, he’s strong and he used it.”
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Super sub Ellis Simms rescued a draw for Everton with his first Premier League goal (Getty Images)Chelsea boss Graham Potter was asked if the the Chelsea dressing-room was, ‘quiet, angry, madness, disbelieving?’ He said: “It was all four. The boys are disappointed. The boys were frustrated because they put a lot into the game intention wise. It was a strong performance from us but we are really really frustrated because we can’t concede goals like that and expect to win games.”
Potter went to on say: “You have to credit Everton, they do what they do well. They use their physicality, they use the set-pieces, they ask you questions. Most of the game we controlled fairly well, as much as you can at his level. But ultimately the first goal is really disappointing as it’s from a set-piece; we spoke about that before the game.
“The second goal we’ve not attacked well enough and then exposed a big space to defend and haven’t done it well enough. These are the little small things. When you look at how much we put into the game and how much we tried to attack, to be cheap with the goals we conceded was frustrating.”