Phil Jagielka believes that Everton must hit the ground running and find early momentum when the new Premier League season kicks off on August 8th.
The Toffees face newly promoted Watford at Goodison Park on the opening day, but then meet last seasons’ top 7 before the end of October.
The Everton skipper is confident though that the team can begin well, despite a tricky looking start to the season.
He told EvertonTV: “It’s nice to get the season-opener at home but it’s always difficult to get one of the newly-promoted teams because everyone expects us to win that game.
“They will probably bring in a couple of different players and it will be difficult to know exactly how they will play. It will be a tough game but we are more than happy to take on anyone at home in the first day of the season.”
One of the reasons why some believe the Toffees were so disappointing last year was the fact they had a very unbalanced pre-season. Some of the squad were given longer breaks due to their participation in the World Cup, whilst others were injured.
This time however, Jagielka hopes the whole squad will be around for the entirety of pre-season, in order to prepare fully ahead of their clash against the Hornets.
“Hopefully we will get everyone back at the same time and have a good trip out to Singapore. Then the team will be properly ready to go, the fans will turn up and hopefully it will be a great day (August 8th).
“It’s been an interesting glance at the fixtures but we will all settle down. We need to make sure we have a better start points-wise than last season.
“I think we played okay at the start of last season but we just didn’t get the points we deserved. We need to make sure we come away from the first month with a few more points and get that momentum going as early as possible in the season.
“Once you gain the momentum you know what can happen, so that will be our main aim – to start positively and kick it through for the rest of season.”
