Long and strong’ – Sean Dyche says Everton deliberately played ‘ugly’ against Burnley

As Everton ended a record-breaking stretch without a win against Burnley, Sean Dyche admitted he put up his team to attempt to get a “ugly” win.

The manager of the Blues claimed that the team’s inability to convert stronger performances into victories away from home was a contributing factor in the tactical choice to go “long and strong” against a team that is firmly entrenched in the bottom three.

He said that there was anxiousness throughout the entire performance and that it lacked ruthlessness and smoothness. However, considering the 13-game, four-month wait for a Premier League victory, Dyche was eventually happy that his team crossed the finish line.

The hard-fought encounter ended with a disastrous error by Burnley goalkeeper Arijanet Muric, leading to the 1-0 victory. In first-half stoppage time, his clearance hit Dominic Calvert-Lewin and came back in, leveling the score. It altered the course of a match in which Everton was finding it difficult to establish themselves.

Following the match, Dyche gave an explanation of his strategy and ideas. “It is a win that is important and welcome,” he declared. We considered how successful we had been this season and how we had failed to win, so we purposefully sought to play strong and long, to make the game as difficult and unpleasant as possible, and we succeeded in getting an ugly win. We intended to get behind them and pose questions of them early on, and I believe that in general, it was successful. We gave the ball away much too easily, but when you are on a run like that, you get nervous and that stops the plot or modifies it. It is crucial that we build on that now.

Everton had more opportunities in the second half thanks to Burnley’s carelessness and Dara O’Shea’s red card after he erred and lunged at breaking Dwight McNeil. Beto and Calvert-Lewin were two of the players who passed up opportunities to close off the game, and Dyche stated that his team needed to have that clinical edge to stop games from getting so tense.

“I thought we had other moments,” he remarked, “but we know we need to improve on the amount of times we break on teams and fail to find the last pass or the crucial moment. It has been a struggle all season.” It was present again today because, although we should have eliminated the game, we didn’t, and as a result, you worry and become anxious toward the conclusion, but the facts are what they are, and I believe they made one accurate shot. It’s a fairly accurate representation of how we controlled the game in a different manner—without the ball as well as with it—and how we provided that feeling to ensure that we won the match, which we did.

“We weren’t far away, we weren’t fluid but we knew that and so the biggest thing for me was to believe in what we were doing, which they did and stuck at it and kept asking questions,” Dyche said when asked what he planned to say to his players when it appeared like they were going into the half goalless and with the momentum against them.