Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti insists his side are still heading in the right direction despite a fourth defeat in five matches cancelling out their stunning start to the season.
Seven successive victories at the start of the campaign, including four in the Premier League, was the club’s best in more than 100 years and they went into the October international break top of the table.
Since then, however, they have taken just four points from their last six matches and their only clean sheet in the league remains the opening day win at Tottenham.
Nevertheless, taking into account injuries to both first-choice full-backs Seamus Coleman and Lucas Digne, Ancelotti does not believe they are going backwards.
“I think we are in the right direction. It is true that we were not able to repeat the start of the season,” he said.
“We have had some difficulties, we lost some players but that doesn’t mean that we are not in the right direction.
“We are in the right direction, but what we are doing in this moment is not enough and every one of us has to put in a little bit more in terms of character, personality, spirit and sacrifice to come back and have more consistency in results.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here