Willie Kirk during Birmingham City Women v Everton Ladies, WSL football match, The Autotech Stadium, Birmingham, UK - 08 Sep 2019 Photo: Paul Greenwood for The FA

‘I don’t think we can blame anybody bar ourselves’ says Kirk as Everton’s winning run ends

Everton dropped their first points of the season yesterday as they were held by a stern Brighton & Hove Albion side at Walton Hall Park.

The Seagulls battled to a 2-2 draw with The Blue Girls, making them not only the first side to take points from Everton this season but also the first team to score more than once against them in the league.

Everton manager Willie Kirk spoke after the game about his side’s display and said that they could only blame themselves for letting the three points slip from their grasp.

“I think it was end-to-end” Kirk said. “I think it wasn’t our best performance.

“I thought it was a good enough performance to probably get three points but we still need to say ‘could we have done better?’ and we definitely could have.

“I don’t think we can blame anybody bar ourselves for dropping points.”

It is not the first time this season that Brighton & Hove Albion have earned a point away at one of the supposedly ‘big clubs’ in the division. Earlier in the campaign, they held Manchester City to an impressive goalless draw.

“Brighton are always organised, they’ve always got bags of energy” Kirk added. “They’re determined, they fight for everything.

“We warned the players yesterday after training that I thought there was just a little bit of something missing from our energy levels and we said to them today in the hotel ‘one thing we’ve got to do is bring energy to the game’ and I thought we started fairly lacklustre.”

Everton were never going to keep their 100% record for the whole season, they would have expected to drop points eventually. Kirk went on to express his content at his side’s start to the new campaign, although there is always room for improvement in his eyes.

“I think when we look at this game as an isolated game we can be disappointed” he said. “I think if we look at 13 points from the first five games, we’re probably okay with that. Knowing it could’ve been better, that’s the new standards that we’ve set.”

One major point of contention in the match was the sending off Kayleigh Green, or lack of. Green had been booked early in the second half and as the game crept into the final 10 minutes, the referee showed her another yellow but not the required red afterwards. This meant that Brighton & Hove Albion completed the match with all 11 players which left Kirk dumbfounded.

He commented on the decision by saying “For a player to get booked twice and still be on the pitch is baffling.

“We were not at our best today but could we have done a little bit better, could the referee have done a little bit better?

“Obviously, I don’t want players getting sent off but that’s the way the game goes and it would have given us that opportunity to really get at them for the last 10 minutes so, it’s frustrating that the referee has made that mistake.

“It’s not helped us but we’ve not helped ourselves”.

After the international break, Everton have three tough fixtures lined-up against Manchester City, Manchester United, and Chelsea all in the space of seven days. The break provides Kirk with an opportunity to gather he is thoughts ahead of those matches

The Everton boss said “It gives me good time, it doesn’t give the players good time because they’re all off on their travels and we just pray that all come back fit and healthy.

“It certainly gives me time to plan for those three games.

“That’s the week you want, who wouldn’t want an FA Cup final followed by United and Chelsea?”

After highlighting a need for more energy in the performance against Brighton & Hove Albion, an energetic performance in the Vitality Women’s FA Cup final is an absolute must for Kirk.

“If we’re lacking energy at Wembley on the 1 November there’ll be a massive inquisition about that” said Kirk. “The players will be energised for that, we’re looking forward to it, we think we can win it.

“We want to win that first silverware with this group of players to really give us a platform to go and be successful for the next three, four, five years.”

Kirk clearly has lofty ambitions for this Everton side and given Manchester City’s inconsistent run of form so far this season, it could be argued that there is no clear favourite going into the Vitality Women’s FA Cup final next month. There would be no better way to bounce back from their disappointing performance yesterday than lifting the trophy and really cementing their status as one of the top teams in English football.

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