Everton boss Rafa Benitez arrived at yesterday's presser armed with stats in anticipation of critical questions after a poor run of results.
Benitez has been unlucky with injuries with last season's top scorer Dominic Calvert-Lewin out since August, midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure missing for over a month with a broken foot, with Richarlison and Andros Townsend joining the likes of Yerry Mina and Tom Davies currently sidelined.
In the face of growing dissent he arrived at his pre-match press conference armed with statistics to support his cause.
"Last year the squad was around 16 players during the whole season, that means you have a lot of players that are not available and a lot of them were injury prone, they were losing between 30 and 40 per cent of the games because they were injured," he said.
"Dominic was playing 85 per cent of the games last season and now he is playing 18 per cent.
"Richarlison was in the Copa America and the Olympic Games and now he is injured because maybe he has been overloaded.
"The majority of the players are playing more than they would expect if you have a squad of 25 players because we don't have too many (available).
"We are trying to manage these problems of the past. We take responsibility because we know we can improve things but sometimes you cannot stop a broken bone of Andros Townsend, the knee of Tom Davies or the metatarsal of Doucoure.
"When you have players overloaded, and Richarlison is an example, then you have to deal with that.
"We will try to improve the squad in January in terms of positions and names and hopefully we can do well."
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