What James Tarkowski told Everton's players in dressing room just minutes after Brighton defeat

James Tarkowski has revealed the message he delivered to his Everton team-mates in the aftermath of their opening day defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion. The Blues were comfortably beaten 3-0 at Goodison Park as new Seagulls boss Fabian Hurzeler kicked off his reign in impressive style.

Despite dominating the opening stages, Sean Dyche's side side fell behind when the unmarked Kaoru Mitoma tapped the ball home following fine work from debutant Yankuba Minteh.

The second half, however, was a horror show for the Blues, who fell further behind when Danny Welbeck struck after he pounced on a mistake from Idrissa Gueye.

The afternoon went from bad to worse for Everton when Ashley Young was given his marching orders after bringing down Mitoma as he raced clear on goal before Simon Adingra completed the scoring four minutes from time. But the message from Tarkowski to his team-mates following the defeat was a simple one.

He said: “I have just said to them in there, 'Don’t be too disheartened by it'. You finish the game being really low because of the way it finished; you are 3-0 down, but like I said, up until the sending off, going down to 10 men, I was really confident that we were going to pick up a result today.

“It can feel low, but once you look at the game, as we will do, then you realise a lot of the good things we did within our game plan. There are a lot of positives to take heading into next week.

“I thought first half we played really well and had a lot of the ball after winning it off them. They are a team who wants to dominate the ball, and we didn’t allow them to do that.

“I think our performance up until the sending off we were doing all right, and it seems mad you are 2-0 down and playing all right, but the final details in their box, and if we give the ball away, we need to be careful, especially against teams like Brighton with the players they have got.

“The offside from Jack Harrison was close; the penalty on Dom (Dominic Calvert-Lewin), which could have stayed as a penalty, those couple of details could have really changed the game in our favour.

“Today didn’t go our way, but there is a long season ahead, and hopefully some of those details will go in our favour soon.”

Michael Keane was selected to start alongside Tarkowski at the heart of Everton’s defence, while Dyche was unable to call uponSeamus Coleman, Jarrad Branthwaite, James Garner, Nathan Patterson and Youssef Chermiti for the game.

And Tarkowski admits that his side has been forced to endure a 'broken pre-season,' which has been far from ideal.

“We have had a bit of a broken pre-season, with lads being injured and missing a few games here and there, so the squad is coming together slowly,” he said.

“It is a long season ahead, but the foundations are there to be built on, but we don’t want to be losing games.

“Ideally, you would have every player fit and doing all of pre-season, so it is not ideal. I missed a few weeks myself, and there are other lads who have missed a bit of time and are still a bit away from coming back.

“Once you get that squad together, I thought we played well today; add a few numbers in then it is another strong squad.

“Hopefully you don’t finish with 10 men and make them subs to impact the game differently. In the end, it was about trying to keep the defeat down to a minimum rather than try and win the game.”

Tarkowski, however, believes that the Blues should only be judged at the end of the season, and certainly not after one bad result; however, he does accept that his side needs to improve in front of goal.

He said: “The way we want to play, especially here, is to win the ball back high up the pitch, and I think these are one of the hardest teams to win the ball back off, but I thought we did it many times today, in good areas as well. That is a positive to take.

“We know we need to score more goals. We need to be more prolific in front of goal, and that is something hopefully throughout the season we pick up on.

“Last season we had a decent run and we finished the season with a decent amount of points, so I am not going to judge ourselves after one game. We will judge ourselves at the end of the season.”