Baines blames bad chemistry for everton’s dismal season
LONDON: Fullback Leighton Baines’ search for the answers behind Everton’s disappointing season has led him to the conclusion that the team are lacking in chemistry.
Everton suffered a third consecutive defeat when they were beaten 1-0 by Manchester United on Sunday and were booed off the Old Trafford pitch by their fans.
The Merseyside team are brimming with talent and boast one of the league’s most lethal finishers in Romelu Lukaku, but are stuck in 12th place in the English Premier League table after 10 defeats and 11 draws in 30 games this season.
Baines identified a lack of togetherness as the problem and said his team-mates were not on the same wavelength as each other.
“I just don’t feel as though the chemistry is quite there with the team on the pitch at the moment, and it hasn’t been for a while,” he told the Liverpool Echo.
“We are maybe leaning too heavily on individuals to come up with something ... (and) we’re not performing as a team to the level we know we can or we should be.”
The one silver lining for Everton is that they have secured a trip to Wembley by making it to the semi-finals of the FA Cup and Baines called on his team-mates to take responsibility and ensure they went into that game with a few morale-boosting wins.
“We’re all accountable,” he added. “We try and put it right but we’ve not been able to.
“We want to win every time we go out to play and we’d like to go into that Cup game with a few wins behind us.
“That’s our season in some respects now, it certainly is from the fans’ point of view and we’ve let them down a lot, it’s our only way of making it up to them.” – Reuters