Silva demands consistency, explains Digne spat

Everton slipped to yet another away defeat when facing a halfway decent team. The Blues lost away to Brighton & Hove Albion 1-0 thanks to a setpiece goal, having hit the woodwork twice themselves and overall putting in a listless performance that merited what they got in the end.

“It’s something that you need to look at. It’s not just our performances but our results. It is a challenge because we had a very good run before the game against Liverpool and then we went on a bad run.

”We had a fantastic reaction in the last game but we do need to stop being so up-and-down with performances and results.

”That is our aim in the second half of the season going into the New Year.”

Silva bemoaned the missed opportunities that the Blues had to seal a win well before the hosts’ goal.

“It was a frustrating afternoon for us. If you want to talk about chances, I think we created more of them. If you look we had great chances from set-pieces and even though it wasn’t our best performance we created enough chances to get the result.

”Straight after their goal we had a chance from Richarlison which came off the post and then late on we had a chance that came off the bar. If you have five, six chances you have to achieve the result.

”In the first 20 minutes we played too slow with the ball. We had the conditions to do better and we were too slow in our build up. We did it completely differently in the last part of the first half and we controlled the match.”

After the game an incensed Lucas Digne appeared to confront referee Andew Madley and a couple of Brighton players including Glenn Murray, and Marco Silva explained what had happened, and that it had nothing to do with the winning goal which was originally chalked off for offside but was then reinstated following a consultation between the officials, who correctly surmised the offside was negated since the ball went off Andre Gomes.

“What I told him is to stay between me and him. What I can say is that it was nothing about the goal.

”We have conditions to do better and so does the referee as well . It was a tough match for us and Brighton, and a tough match for the referee as well.

“He’s upset, not just him. First because we didn’t win the match and it was our goal (objective). And he was upset with the referee in some moments of the match as well, but it’s part of the game. Now I want him to clear his mind and to prepare (for) the next match.

“It was a frustrating afternoon for us. I think we created more than our opponent. Even if it wasn’t our best performance, we created enough to achieve a different result.”