Shy Everton must be more courageous, says Carlo Ancelotti
Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti says his players must eradicate their ‘shyness’ as he begins building a more courageous style of football at Goodison Park.
The Italian will spend the remainder of the season trying to impose his ideas on a squad he feels too often takes the safe option in their passing. He is demanding a more direct, forward-thinking attitude from his line-up after being particularly unhappy with the first-half display in Saturday’s 1-1 draw at West Ham.
He says his senior players like Fabian Delph and Theo Walcott must set the example.
“If you want to play football at a certain level you have to be brave. You cannot be shy,” said Ancelotti.
“You have to take responsibility and the players with more quality have to take responsibility. Here in general we have a young squad but players with a strong personality and players who are experienced like Delph and Walcott who can help the young to show more bravery and have more courage.
“I like the players who are going to take responsibility on the pitch. It is true in the first half against West Ham we were too shy. I told the players at the end of the first half that if you are shy you cannot play football, you have to do something different. Against West Ham it was like this.”
Everton face Newcastle at Goodison Park on Tuesday night hoping to secure the first of four wins that would ensure they do not get dragged back into a relegation battle.
They must do so without Richarlison, who is still absent with a knee injury.
Ancelotti is looking forward to having more time to work with his players to evolve his system.
“At this moment we are not playing vertical, we are playing a lot of balls back, instead of playing forward, that is how we can improve,” he said.
“We can play more vertically. We want to build up but when you have the possibility to play forward you must play forward. Quick. If you are slow at the back you have less possibility to find space in the opponent’s half. Sometimes when you say to a player that we want possession, they think possession is the target. The target is not possession. The target is always to score goals. Our idea is to do that through possession but we want to score goals. If you see some data more possession sometimes means you have less possibility to score. There are a lot of games where the winning team has less possession.”
