Silva: Everton players obliged to make fans proud

One of the key points Marco Silva has been trying to make since he arrived at Everton was the importance of the supporters to the club’s success. He’s been pushing for a bigger connection between the players and the fans, and reiterated the importance of that again yesterday.

Everton host Huddersfield Town at Goodison Park today, and Silva rallied the fans ahead of the game which leads into the season’s first international break.

“If you cannot have big support behind you cannot achieve something important.

“For me, it is the most important thing. And it is our obligation to give 100 per cent every time we play to make them proud.

“We will try to perform well, we will try to get good results every time but we have to give 100 per cent every time.

“Sometimes we will perform really well and they will enjoy it and, in other moments, not so well, and in those moments it is important they support us and push us to try to win matches.”

The Blues are unbeaten in four games, though they have given up leads twice while away from home.

“We are in the beginning of a long-term process. We are trying to build something important here and everything starts with our idea as a team.

“We are building, we are creating and, of course, it is important for my players to enjoy their football as well.

“But the most important thing to me and our players is we are working hard every day and then, at the weekend, we transfer that to the matches.”

The manager was happy with how the new players coming into the squad played midweek, and reiterated that the competition for each spot on the starting XI will make everyone better.

“Big competition between them is what I want. It is something we have wanted to do since pre-season when we made some decisions in our squad.

“We had some injured players [for the Rotherham game] and if we had more solutions I would have made more than eight changes.

“But I called on some players and they answered really well to me.”