Liverpool comparison made as Sean Dyche told Everton blame lies elsewhere
Sean Dyche is not solely to blame after a poor start to the season for Everton as the medical team got their pre-season programme “all wrong”, according to Dean Saunders.
Speaking on TalkSPORT (18 September, 7:52am), the ex-Liverpool forward referenced his former club in comparison to the Toffees’ current injury list, saying the club’s summer preparations are to blame.
Highlighting that the Blues currently have several players out with muscle injuries, Saunders recalled that similar early-season injury issues have previously happened at other Premier League clubs.
He said: “It happened to Liverpool a couple of years ago, and last year at Manchester United and Chelsea.
“If you’re getting muscle injuries early in the season, you’re getting your pre-season all wrong because the sports scientists tell you every day, ‘that session was hard, that has taken it out of this player’.
“They’ve got a load of injuries and Sean will question where it’s gone wrong. These aren’t twisted ACLs or whatever – it’s a lot of injury problems so you’re clearly doing something wrong.”
Everton injury crisis yet to ease up for Sean Dyche
A terrible start to the new Premier League season – with the Toffees losing all four matches and conceding 13 goals – has been compounded by the unavailability of several key players so far.
Amid absentees in all areas of the pitch, particularly those in which Dyche already had little cover, the 53-year-old has been forced to shunt several players into unfamiliar positions just to fill out a team sheet.
Jarrad Branthwaite is the standout name on an increasingly lengthy list, and he’s yet to feature for the first team whatsoever this season having emerged as the best defender on the books at Goodison Park.
A once-watertight defence has been patched together by Dyche and shipped 13 Premier League goals in the process, with Dwight McNeil going from scoring at Aston Villa to playing at left-back in the EFL Cup.
The next few weeks of an already testing season will eventually see players swapping the treatment table for the dressing room, but until then, Dyche will simply have to make do with what he’s got.
In other Everton news, takeover talks have been ‘complicated’ in the wake of a new bid to buy the club from Farhad Moshiri.
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