Blaming Frank Lampard for Everton’s problems misses the bigger picture completely – DOMINIC KING

Another league calamity that has been a source of misery for Everton, but somehow it leads to Frank Lampard’s eyes.

A 4-1 humility in Bournemouth on a grim Tuesday night in November is one of those hits that spring from nightmares, not least for the 1,500 hardened souls who had made the 550 miles round trip from Merseyside at considerable cost.

The Carabao Cup should come with a health warning for Everton. They have never taken home the trophy which, in theory, should be the club’s main target every season, and this elimination stands alongside Bristol Rovers (2000), Blackburn (2008) and Queens Park Rangers (2021) .

Frank Lampard was blamed on Tuesday for Everton’s 4-1 in Bournemouth

Those who look in from the outside will see Lampard and try to put the blame on him alone. He was guilty of making a mistake in his team selection at the Vitality Stadium, putting his trust in players who weren’t good enough, and criticism is understandable for that.

At one of his first press conferences on Merseyside in February, Lampard was asked if he could trust this team completely. He frowned at the question, perhaps wondering why it was asked, but nine months after he was on the job, he’ll understand why.

Everton’s squad continues to be riddled with individuals who haven’t been good enough or haven’t achieved the required consistency during their time at Goodison Park and when too many of them sit together the consequences are chaotic; Bournemouth took great pleasure in inflicting misery.

You can be sure that he will not make the same mistake again.

But the Toffees team continues to be littered with individuals who just aren’t good enough

Lampard is now well aware of the quality he lacks outside of his first-choice starting line-up

“We’ll look and play differently on Saturday,” said Lampard, words that fluctuated between a promise and a threat. He is not the type of man who will suffer fools and anyone who will not believe in what he is doing will quickly find that he is redundant.

These have been a challenging couple of weeks for Everton and five defeats in seven games have broken the tentative optimism that had begun to grow after an encouraging run of seven unbeaten games in a six-week period, the club’s collective best form since the 2013–13 campaign. 14.

Lampard, who is a hands-on coach despite having some trusted assistants by his side, had been credited for overseeing a start to the season where Everton scored the best goals against column in the Premier at one point. league.

Do things really have to be so cramped that the first difficulty leaves critics wondering if Lampard is the right man to oversee a renaissance at Goodison Park? In other words, Pep Guardiola would have a hard time getting wildly different results with Lampard’s squad.

That’s not hyperbole. Lampard knew over the summer what fortune lay ahead and never tried to promise the world in terms of what Everton could do in the coming months. He spoke with realism and consistently refused to get caught up in sweet talk.

There is no need for a knee-jerk reaction to Lampard and his future as a manager at Goodison

Pep Guardiola would be pushed to get better results with the same group of players

He came to the end of a period when mistakes made by Farhad Moshiri, the club’s erratic owner, nearly cost Everton their place in the Premier League: the stress he inflicted on supporters would never forget become.

Lampard did what he had after his appointment in January to keep Everton afloat, but that was just a harbinger of the real hard work: when new football director Kevin Thelwell arrived, for example, his first task was to pay a wage bill almost out of the hand ran.

Everton sold Richarlison, their best player, to Tottenham in July and have been without Dominic Calvert-Lewin, their main source of goals for most of the season, and it cannot be underestimated how significant those issues were.

Neal Maupay – one of only two players to recognize the players who left for Bournemouth on Tuesday after the final whistle – is fair, but he has never been a prolific goalscorer in England and Everton are crying out for someone to threaten them.

The manager knows this like no other. Those who believe he is the cause of Everton’s current form are terribly mistaken and fail to take in the bigger picture. It will be a long road before this club can start traveling with consistent smoothness. Be prepared for more bumps along the way.