Everton boss Sean Dyche sends Leeds United strong relegation reminder as coach hails unexpected win

As a consequence of Everton and Nottingham Forest picking up three points on Bank Holiday Monday, Leeds United will kick off this weekend in the bottom three. The Toffees and Steve Cooper’s Reds defeated Brighton and Southampton, respectively, to move themselves out of the relegation zone at the expense of Sam Allardyce’s Leeds and Dean Smith’s Leicester City.

Everton boss Sean Dyche hailed his team’s performance at the Amex Stadium, admitting the 5-1 scoreline was somewhat unexpected but the display had been a long time coming. During his post-match press conference, the ex-Burnley manager issued a reminder to the teams also battling it out at the bottom, declaring ‘there’s still life’ in his Everton group.

“I’m not sure I saw it coming myself in terms of the scoreline but I did with the performance as I saw it at Leicester.

“People will be out there thinking ‘right, there’s life in that team’ but we’ve never lost sight of that. It just reminds the players, the work ethic, the commitment to the cause and the connectivity of the group.

“I know there’s quality here. I’ve always believed in this quality and I’ve said it many times. Talking about it doesn’t win you a game, it’s the collective mentality to go and deliver everything you’ve got and I think we did that at Leicester where we were very frustrated to not come away with three points.

"But we got our reward for carrying on that mentality here [Brighton] with many good individual performances and a very good team performance against a team who, rightly so, have been applauded for the way they have gone about things this season,” Dyche said.

The 51-year-old is keeping his squad rooted, though, reminding his own players that there are still three games to play and they are not out of the relegation mire just yet.

“There was the feel-good factor of a very important away win but I reminded the lads afterwards that it’s only another step – and I said that after Arsenal, there are three more big steps we’ve got to take,” Dyche added.

Everton face Manchester City, Wolverhampton Wanderers and AFC Bournemouth in their final three matches this season and currently sit two points ahead of Leeds.