Mason Holgate has admitted there is a lot Everton should have done differently during their defeat to Leeds United on Saturday evening. A goal from Raphinha with just over ten minutes left of normal time was enough to seal all three points for Marcelo Bielsa’s side and condemn the Blues to back-to-back Goodison Park losses for the first time under Carlo Ancelotti. Holgate was captained Everton for the first time in the absence of both Seamus Coleman and Lucas Digne through injury, with Gylfi Sigurdsson only named on the bench for the clash. The centre-back was making his second appearance of the term following a toe injury picked up in pre-season, and believes he is getting more fit as the weeks go by.
Mason Holgate said “I felt comfortable, I’ve had a good few weeks training now, I’m feeling fitter. Obviously, you’re not going to be 100 per cent because that comes with matches. To be able to get matches in now is good and, hopefully, we can now get a few wins on the board. There’s lots of different things [we could have done differently]. The main one being on the ball, not pushing things as much as we did, Obviously, we know what kind of game they like to play, which is man-to-man, intensive, back and forth. We know the way we wanted to play and ultimately we didn’t do that. It felt like we got involved in a game of you attack, we attack. The intensity they made the game… as soon as we got the ball, we felt we had to go forward as fast as we could as well. That led to it being back and forth, back and forth. When it’s like that, it makes it into a 50/50 game. They got the goal in the end, and that’s won them the game. On a different day, we could have nicked that and we could be talking like it’s a good result. It’s disappointing but all we can do is regroup and get ready to go again.”
