James Tarkowski believes Sean Dyche has delivered ‘progress’ in his first year at Everton.
Tuesday marks a full 12 months since Dyche was named as Frank Lampard’s successor in the Goodison Park hot seat amid a second relegation battle.
The 52-year-old preserved the Blues’ Premier League status at the end of that campaign before wiping out the club’s 10-point deduction this season.
And Tarkowski, who also worked under Dyche at Burnley, feels there are shoots of optimism for Everton as the manager’s first anniversary looms.
He said: “First of all we stayed in the league last year, which was the one and only target when the manager came in so we did our job there.
“I think there has been progress made, there has been disappointing patches within that.
“The start of the season we didn’t win for a few games and then we bounced back really strongly after the points deduction and put loads of points on the board which was good.
“We were on a nice little run before this (defeat): three clean sheets in a row, undefeated, and then Saturday [against Luton] was disappointing.
“There are a number of times you will get tested at this club and that was a day like this.
“It is now down to us to go back out on Tuesday [at Fulham] and get things going again.”
Tarkowski also argues Everton’s points deduction offers a false perception of their efforts this season as they would move from 17th up to 12th if restored.
He added: “Without the points deduction we are well ahead of where we should be so it makes it look a bit false.
“But I think we have performed pretty well overall.
“We had a spell of three losses where we played well in two of those games and then poor at Wolves, came back and played well against Aston Villa, beat Crystal Palace in the cup – didn’t play great but won the game.
“Then on Saturday we had a chance to put another win on the board and two set-pieces have killed us so that is something we need to resurrect.”