Silva credits poor defensive record as “more easy” to fix – is he right?

Marco Silva believes that Everton’s struggles at the back recently have come down to individual errors, which will be easier to put right.

Despite starting the season in fine defensive form with back-to-back clean sheets, Everton had struggled since, conceding at least two goals in each of their last four games in all competitions.

Many of those mistakes can be traced back to the actions of an individual, and Silva believes that is a positive sign, as it is easier to iron out the creases when an individual is pitting a foot wrong.

Talking ahead of Saturday’s clash with Sheffield United at Goodison Park, via the Liverpool Echo, Silva said:

We have always something to work on.

It’s hard for us as a team when you feel that some things come from the individual, but we always have a way to work on it.

But things are more easy, in my opinion, to solve if they come from individual things because it’s so clear.

Sometimes if you’re talking about collective things you have to work more and more, but with individual things it’s sometimes a matter of being just more focused or more aggressive.

After we will become solid again, because they [the players] are the same. We changed one or two things last summer but they are more or less the same players.

Before these last four games we had 10 clean sheets in 13 games. Ok we changed two players in that period, but we have to again become a solid team.

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I certainly hope that Silva is able to make changes to the defensive unit as easily as he claims he will be able to do. Yerry Mina and Michael Keane were defensive rocks to start the season, And now they’re struggling to make their presence felt.

Everton cannot continue to play with players who make simple errors due to poor positional awareness, poor marking or misplacing passes. There needs to be a fix and if it isn’t with the personnel, then it has to be on the training ground.