Frank Lampard has sent a warning to his Everton squad that they can’t get complacent following their rousing victory over Manchester United at Goodison Park last time out.
Frank Lampard said: “Absolutely I have [warned about focus], because a 10-day gap can be beneficial in some ways, but one of the potential negatives can be to make us forget the absolute dedication and focus that went into getting the Manchester United result, and thinking that Goodison is a place where we just have good results,” said Lampard, who has won five of his first seven home matches in charges. It doesn’t work like that. So that’s the message I’ve made to the players overs the last couple of days and in the build up to the game. That the things we do at Goodison to win the games, it is important we do them every game. The reaction will be in the performance, won’t it? But in terms of the players, yeah, listening has been good, understanding has been good, so we will see in the performance tomorrow. You can stare at the fixture list all day. I do know that it’s in our hands and that’s the most important thing for us. But I had an idea before Burnley [on points needed], and then the Burnley results changes it for us completely. It would have looked completely different with a different result so I’m more focused on game by game.”
Last week, the Clarets made the shock decision to sack their manager Sean Dyche, who had been at the helm at Turf Moor for almost 10 years. Lampard believes that Burnley came to that conclusion as they looked to give their squad what could be a crucial lift heading into the closing stages of the campaign. But, he knows that Everton can’t control what their relegation rivals do, regardless of who is in charge.
Frank Lampard added: “I think, or I just assume because I don’t know, that the change was made for an uplift, because this is the Premier League and it’s business, and it’s too big an idea for a club to be relegated. And also the fans and for what it means to everyone at the club so I don’t think it would have been a decision made lightly. But it’s really important to get across what a great job Sean has done because I don’t want it to look like (I’m saying) they’re going to get better now. That’s why the answer is I don’t know. But I assume it was done to get some sort of uplift and that remains to be seen, but again it’s important to us to realise: the situation is very clear, the table is very clear – if we do our job well enough we’ll stay in this league. And we can’t control what Burnley do, whether it’s Sean Dyche or someone else in charge, and that’s a fact.”
