Neville: Fans fury justified
Phil Neville believes Everton fans have every right to be angry with their team as they continue to plunge towards relegation, conceding a glut of goals as they go.
They host Liverpool at Goodison Park in the 202nd Merseyside derby desperate to turn things around after three successive defeats saw them ship 10 goals.
Utility man Neville conceded: “We lost 4-0 last week, 4-0 at Villa on Boxing Day and 4-0 at West Brom recently.
“If I was an Everton fan I’d be disappointing with the way the team is playing at the moment.
“For the derby game we need to restore a little bit of pride. It’s a game we can’t let our supporters down in. We let them down at Villa and as players we take full responsibility.
“In the derby there will be no excuses. When you lose 4-0 it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth and every single player in that dressing room wants to put right what we didn’t do right against Villa.”
Everton go into the derby on the back of three defeats – which were preceded by encouraging wins over Newcastle and Blackburn and a draw at Manchester United which appeared to suggest the tide had turned.
“A couple of weeks ago when we drew at Old Trafford we maybe got ourselves a little bit carried away by looking at the top half of the table with two homes games to come,” added Neville.
“But the realisation now is that we are in a real dogfight and this Christmas period is crucial to all of us.
“You hear it every season, don’t you. You always think you are too good to go down but when you are down there and are sucked into it, anything can happen so we need to get ourselves out of it – and fast.
“The derby is a massive game for the players and probably the best way to get the Villa defeat out of our system is to go into the biggest club game we have had this season and get a result.”
But Neville admits he is concerned by the way Everton collapsed after conceding a second goal which doubled the lead given to Villa by Milan Baros’s ‘handball’ effort which was missed by referee Mike Riley.
“We felt a little bit hard done by with the first goal but the disappointing thing was the way we reacted to the second goal,” he said.
“At 2-0, if you nick a goal you can get back in the game but we didn’t do that and were disappointed in the end, and that second goal knocked the stuffing out of us.”
