Ian Wright says Everton must give Marco Silva enough time, highlights their defensive shortcomings

Marco Silva
Marco Silva

Everton suffered their 10th Premier League loss of the season at the hands of Wolverhampton Wanderers over the weekend.

The Toffees dropped to ninth in the table as a result, and the poor run, which has seen them win just thrice in their last 12 league games has set the alarm bells ringing at Goodison Park.

It remains to be seen if the board will react anytime soon and if the future of manager Marco Silva at Everton is in huge danger, but Premier League legend Ian Wright believes the Portuguese still needs more time, and he reckons they have to fix their individual errors and defensive weakness first.

“There does seem to be a disconnect in respect of the work they must be doing on the training ground,” the former Arsenal striker said on BBC 5 Live Sport.

“When you consider the amount of set pieces, the amount of individual mistakes that they are making, the fact that a lot of Everton fans are saying they aren’t seeing enough changes to the formation, we’re talking about a coach that was pursued for two years to get to this point and they brought in a new director of football, so you’ve to give them time to get things going.

“Well, I don’t think they should change, but patience is needed. For me, defensively, there isn’t enough work being done. They do need a striker who can score goals but even at that, when you look at the individual mistakes and how easy it’s to get through them, and the fact that they do seem quite easy to score against at certain stages, there seems to be a lot more work to be done.”

Everton have leaked 36 league goals – as many as they have scored – and have kept just six clean sheets in 25 games.

Silva has to address his side’s defensive woes as soon as possible, and while they are far from being threatened by relegation, a top-six finish was the target heading into 2018-19, and that they have failed to win games that appeared easy on paper is alarming.

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