Ronald Koeman has criticised Everton’s players for a lack of finesse against Hajduk Split.
Goals from Michael Keane and Idrissa Gueye handed the Blues a comfortable margin heading into the return leg of their Europa League play-off next week.
However the hosts could have further increased their advantage in the second half with Wayne Rooney most notably guilty of missing a gilt-edged chance.
With a marked difference between Everton’s performance either side of the interval, Koeman insists that he will speak with his side about their failure to kill off the tie.
He said: “I’m really happy about the first half and really unhappy about the second.
“I think we lost a big opportunity to score more goals today and decide the qualification.
“The way how we dropped the tempo in the second half, I don’t think it’s about being after 45 minutes.
“I don’t think our opponents made it more difficult, it was us.
“We dropped the tempo, we did not swap sides as fast as we did in the first half and we even had some good chances.
“We have to realise that Hajduk got two or three good chances to make it 2-1 and we were lucky.
“It’s not about a striker, it’s about the tempo of the game. In my opinion, in the second half we didn’t play to the maximum.
“If you are 2-0 up in a Premier League game then we know it’s three point but this is two games and with a better result it would have been easier.
“It will be difficult now.
“I will ask the players. It’s not the way I like to play because I think we did really well in the first half, played with a high tempo.
“We created chances to score and the second half was more about controlling the game and getting a better result than 2-0.”