Sean Dyche makes 'farcical' Everton claim and names what his players 'did the opposite of' in defeat

Sean Dyche rued Everton’s defensive errors in their 2-0 defeat by Nottingham Forest.

The Toffees lost their final game of 2024 at the hands of Nuno Espirito Santo’s side at Goodison Park. Everton created a dearth of goalscoring chances and were duly punished by high-flying Forest. T

he visitors opened the scoring through Chris Wood’s strike in the 15th minute. Then Everton gift-wrapped Forest’s second goal just after the hour mark when Abdoulaye Doucoure played a loose pass, with James Tarkowski and Vitalii Mykolenko failing to react quick enough. The mistake was punished by Morgan Gibbs-White as he finished beyond home goalkeeper Jordan Pickford.

The loss arrested the Blues’ four-game unbeaten streak. They had more possession but couldn’t break down Forest’s defence. Everton boss Dyche said: “They did what they have done to a lot of teams this season. They played counter-attack football, played it very well, by the way, that's not a slight on them. They stayed organised, played forward quickly, not loads of passes around the back.

“They scored one good goal - poor from us - but the second goal is farcical for us. you can't give away goals, particularly ones who are renowned this season to be difficult to break down.

“In the first half, our players did the opposite of what we told them, which is very frustrating as a manager. We analysed it, we looked at the things we wanted to do and didn’t offer anything we expected us to deliver. It was a poor goal from us defensively, which is unusual for us lately but they they did the basics better than us in the first half. They second half, we were a bit better but didn’t really open them up and are 2-0 after a soft goal.

“They are hard to open up when they are in front and I think they have a player in form in Chris Wood, who I know well and was excellent without having too many touches of the ball. His commitment, his work ethic, his desire and gets himself another goal.”

Asked what Everton’s game-plan was, Dyche replied: “Playing quickly, playing with tempo, stretching their back four and asking as many questions by playing a tempo game and we did completely the opposite. We went completely the opposite, rolled it at the back pretty pointlessly at the back at times.”