Frank Lampard issues Newcastle United warning ahead of Everton’s visit to St James Park

Everton manager Frank Lampard has warned Newcastle United his side are showing ‘much better signs’ ahead of their visit to St James Park.

The Toffees put in a timid performance on their last trip to Tyneside as a Mason Holgate own goal, a stunning Kieran Trippier free-kick and a Ryan Fraser strike inspired the Magpies to a 3-1 win that kickstarted their push away from the Premier League relegation zone.

Lampard’s side remained in the mire until the last week of the season and only secured their top flight status in the final days of the campaign when they came from two goals down to beat Crystal Palace and leave Leeds United and Burnley to battle to avoid the final relegation place.

Lampard has began to put his own stamp on his squad following the high-profile departure of Richarlison to Tottenham Hotspur, with the likes of James Tarkowski, Conor Coady and Amadou Onana all joining the Toffees during a hectic summer transfer window.

Reflecting on the progress of both his own side and Newcastle since that February meeting, Lampard admitted both managers have seen progression from last season’s successful battles against relegation.

“They’ve (Newcastle) got a fantastic manager and staff, with a lot of detail I’m sure just from the outside,” he explained.

“Really good players, recruited really well in the last two windows and, of course, the new funds they have, they want to direct it well, they’ve brought in a great director of football, so it feels like there is a real plan and direction to what they are doing.

“We have to respect that and understand we are in for a very tough match against a good team on all levels.  It’s a bit like people ask me about Tottenham, it’s so different, we are different this year.  They feel like they’ve moved on steps, we feel like we’ve moved on steps.  Last year, we went there and it was difficult for us.  We didn’t really have an impact on the game and we had a few of those away from home where we didn’t have energy, legs and personality to contest in games.

“We are showing much better signs of that, so hopefully we can continue with that.”

Despite their improvement in performances, Everton travel to Tyneside sat in the lower half on the Premier League table after suffering successive defeats against Spurs and Manchester United.  Lampard is not paying to much attention to the league table and revealed he has to take ‘a longer-term view’ of his attempts to turnaround the fortunes at Goodison Park.

“That’s the difficult thing about looking at the league at this time of year because it’s so close.  We’ve been through a couple of tough games, we don’t get the results we want and from everyone gets excited it’s now looks different.

“I wouldn’t put too much on that at the minute.  We have to have a longer-term view and purely focus on what we can do, which is look at our own performance and push the table to side.  We did enough table-watching last year to last us a lifetime.  Looking at results, looking where we are, it was desperate.  At the minute, if we can just focus on what we can control, hopefully we won’t have that sort of desperation in the future.”