Frank Lampard has opened up on his ‘particular’ training methods at Finch Farm after managing to transform Everton’s performance. The Everton boss opened up on sessions that he and his staff have been working on, including specific work based around Saturday’s opponents.
Frank Lampard said: “Myself and the staff that work with me, we’ve been very particular about the message we want to get across. I think it’s important to come in mid-season and prioritise the things you want to improve instantly, to make the message as simple as you can. And then to get the work right on the training pitch. Some of the work is kind of generic work in terms of the principles we want to play, to move well and through the lines, to have a quick reaction to win the ball back. Particularly going into Leeds, we had to work on the shape – making sure we wouldn’t allow Leeds to play through or switch quickly on us. So it’s a mixture of principle work of how we want to play and the sessions we put on for that, teamwork about the opponent and how good we can be, and then there’s a bit of messaging and showing the players some video reminding them how good they are. The great thing about today [Saturday] is they’ll feel that in their performance, which was a really strong one. It’s early days, it’s one league win since I’ve been here but it feels like a big one. But the important thing now is nobody thinks we’ve cracked it. We need to keep moving on and doing the right things.”
Everton’s transformation on Saturday was most noticeable in their attacking play, managing a great amount of shots on target and chances created. Lampard was delighted to see that from his players and it’s something that he had been keen to improve on throughout the course of the week. However, he knows that the hard work is far from over.
Frank Lampard said: “I think one of the things was the high press and winning the ball back high up the pitch. If you’re going to give territory away and win it in your own half, it’s hard to get up the pitch. We won it back a lot and we were really quick in our transitions, which is something we talked about a lot. Also in terms of our possession, making sure we could quickly work through lines. I thought, against Leeds because they’re unique, we wanted to hit the front earlier than we maybe would do. They go man-to-man, spaces open up behind their midfield if you drop to play. Once we played it into Dominic and Richy their strengths are to hold the ball and they did it brilliantly today. I want the fans to have a team that are creating chances, crossing, having shots. That’s the sort of football I want to watch. Again we’ve got work to do to get to exactly where we want, this is one performance. But if we can replicate that and keep working in the right direction, we’ll hopefully have more days like this.”
