The centre back said Everton had come along way since last summer and that progress deserves to be the focus during a quiet January
Jarrad Branthwaite believes the defining storyline of Everton’s season should be the progress wrought by Sean Dyche as the club heads into a quieter January.
The draw in the FA Cup at Crystal Palace marked the end of an intense run of fixtures across the festive season – one of frustration as Everton fell to a series of defeats.
That slump was arrested at Selhurst Park and the replay provides another opportunity to get back to winning ways. But with a break before the Premier League visit to Goodison Park of Aston Villa, and then 16 days until the next league outing, the table pauses with Everton close to the bottom three.
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For Branthwaite, who believed Everton deserved to win on Thursday, the recent run without a win should not dominate the narrative of the coming weeks. Instead, he said, the wider perspective is more important – one that shows a side that, but for a points deduction, would be comfortably positioned in mid-table.
Speaking after the Palace match, Branthwaite expressed disappointment at not finding a first win in five and added his own frustration to the growing calls of anger from within and around Everton over the decisions going against the club. He branded the controversial sending off of Dominic Calvert-Lewin a “terrible decision”. But for all the difficulties a congested fixture list brought to Dyche’s thin squad, and the contentious calls making life harder for the players on the pitch, Branthwaite was positive about the position Everton are in heading into 2024.
He said: “What we have got to focus on is how far we have come from the start of the season and last season. We have made a big step and I think the manager is a big part of that and has changed the mentality of the club, changed how we do things. I think we need to keep doing this and we have had positive results this season and I think more positive results will come.”
Branthwaite believed Everton played better in the goalless draw in south London than when the team won 3-2 in the league earlier in the season. He enjoyed a more impressive game – looking far more comfortable against playmaker Eberechi Eze, who caused him problems when they last met.
Asked whether he learned from that previous game, Branthwaite said: “I think it was more of team performance. Everyone was on it today. We had a point to prove, we came down here and we wanted to show how good we were as a team. We got the result here last time but I think this was a much better performance than before. We learn from games, not just the last Palace game, but games in the past – we look at clips and we need to keep doing that, developing as a team and hopefully give more positive performances.”
