What Dominic Calvert-Lewin said in dressing room as quadruple Everton injury update given

Sean Dyche admitted he had to overrule Dominic Calvert-Lewin before he was substituted at half-time in Everton’s loss to Manchester City.

The Toffees fell to a 3-0 defeat by the Premier League champions-elect - leaving them just one point and one place above the relegation zone.

Everton had matched City for much of the first half before Ilkay Gundogan’s 37th-minute opener. Calvert-Lewin had caused problems for the visitors’ defence with his pace and physicality.

However, the England international suffered a tight groin and came off at the interval. Calvert-Lewin wanted to carry on but having recently returned from more than two months on the sidelines because of a hamstring issue, Dyche was taking no risks.

The Blues manager said: “I had to make a call on it because he felt his groin. It’s a tight groin but tight groins can lead to damaged groins so I had to make a call on it - simple as that.

“It would have been a harder call if it had been 0-0 but at 2-0 I have to make a call and I said: ‘Right, Dom, you’re coming off’. He wanted to give it a go and I said: ‘No, no, no, you’ve got to come off’.”

Meanwhile, Vitalli Mykolenko was unavailable for the City loss because of a thigh injury he suffered in training on the eve of the encounter,

Tom Davies was another absent from the match-day squad while Ben Godfrey (groin) missed a third successive match.

Dyche said on the trio: “Tom hopefully will settle down this week Ben, we’ll wait and see but he was not ready. Myko, it has only just happened. A player gets injured 20 minutes to go in a session and it is a lot of an ask to change the shape while Dom, we had to make a call during the game.”