Silva: I respect how the Everton fans are feeling

Everton slipped to a 2-0 defeat at home against Norwich City yesterday, completing a hat-trick of losses to newly-promoted sides, without even scoring a goal. The Blues huffed and puffed all game long but never looked like scoring after another limp performance.

After the game Marco Silva tried to explain away the appalling effort, but his words came across as empty platitudes.

“Many things. It was not just one or two things. The main thing in my opinion is that you can can’t make the right decisions and you can’t have a good performance if you are afraid to play.

“This afternoon there were many, many moments where we didn’t have the courage to make the right decisions. That was one of the things.

“Of course, they came here to play their way and the way many teams come to play against us here — the same defensive organisation, to be compact and close the space for us.

“But in these types of moments, we have to play with intensity, with mobility as well and make the right decisions.”

The Blues actually started the better side in the second half, but all it took was an error by the two Everton centrehalves to allow Norwich to take the lead, and that was about that.

“The first half was too slow; we didn’t create enough chances. We spoke at half-time we were prepared to change some things as well in the first minutes of the second half but we started faster, quicker in the second half and created one or two dangerous moments.

“But after comes a big mistake from ourselves, conceding one goal like we did the first one and then things became more and more tough for us.

“Of course, the crowd was not happy with the performance and the players started to feel uncomfortable with our performance as well but it’s up to us — we have to solve the problems on the pitch because we have the quality.

“But this afternoon, we have to be clear, we didn’t deserve to win the game; we didn’t deserve to get the three points. It was our aim before the game but we didn’t perform at the level [to do that].”

Silva did own up that the spotlight would indeed shine brightest on him after this loss, and had a message for the fans who at this point are simply fed up with the excuses, this being Everton’s seventh loss in thirteen games.

“It is not the moment to talk about individual positions. We have to look what is best for us as a club and for myself and the players as well - but always the club has to be at the top.

”If you are really disappointed with the afternoon I can imagine they [fans] are as well and they have the reaction to the manager and the players.

”When you lose a match, the first person they look to is the manager. Football is like that.

”The message is I respect what is their feeling, for sure. It is not the first time they felt the way they felt this afternoon.”

Reports say that the Everton Board met in the aftermath of the game, with the 42-year-old manager joining the meeting, but it appears there has been no clear resolution coming out of that.