Koeman: Crazy game, crazy result, world-class striker

The Everton manager Ronald Koeman wasn’t as grim as his picture here shows after the Blues pulled off a 6-3 win against AFC Bournemouth at Goodison Park earlier today.

When asked by the Sky Sports reporter immediately after the game about how he felt about the result, he laughed and said -

“You have the time? It's crazy. I’m happy about the three points, but not happy about how we played after halftime.

Before the half, we were very clinical, scored three times. But after, we dropped the intensity.”

He commended the day’s opponents, the Cherries who are led by boyhood Everton fan Eddie Howe -

“Bournemouth played good football offensively, I have to mention.

“You get this kind of result when both teams want to play offensive football. Not our best defensive performance. It was a crazy game and a crazy result.

“Nine goals in a game is not normal, both teams defenders lost against the strikers.

“Romelu Lukaku was world class today. How he finished, how he scored the goals brought the points today.”

In his official post-match press conference a little later, he was still excited about the Belgian.

“He’s a world-class striker. He’s improving but the big quality he’s showing every day - something that maybe isn’t so difficult in training but it is in games - is how clinical he is. His finishing is one of the best.

“I have the pleasure every day to be on the training pitch when he is finishing, he will always finish in training. He has world-class quality in scoring goals and that was really important because to win the game today we needed to score at least four goals.”

Koeman mentioned he needed to make changes to rein in the game as it looked like Bournemouth were going to claw their way back to parity.

“It was a strange final result after half-time. I think we dropped our intensity a little bit but it’s also a big compliment to Bournemouth, who played good football in the second half and made it really difficult by playing really offensively.

“We had difficulties in stopping that but now I’m really happy that I changed the system to five at the back because then we got the control back in the game.

“It was a very tactical game. Both teams changed their system during the game and that made it difficult but we did a job. It was a great game for the fans, not for me after [the half-time score] but it’s three points and we scored six goals. Now we need to learn from the mistakes we made.”