Townsend: Lampard did everything right at Everton; players let him down

Departing Everton winger Andros Townsend says the players let down Frank Lampard last season.

Lampard was sacked and replaced by Sean Dyche in midseason, which eventually saw them beat the drop on the final day.

Townsend told talkSPORT: “When Frank first arrived, he was ambitious, he had dreams,’ Townsend began. ‘You look at his first transfer window, he brought in Dele Alli, he brought in Donny van de Beek from Manchester United, and it was sort of, “right, we’re Everton, we should be dining at the top table’.”

“And then obviously what happened, happened. Relegation battle, and you look at his second window compared to his first window, his first window was Hollywood signings.

“His second window, first signing, James Tarkowski, second signing, Conor Coady, [Amadou] Onana. He got in leaders, he got in quality, he got in senior figures which we were missing in the dressing room to sort of be that experience, be that example.

“So for me he did everything right, we went into last season… Well I definitely went into last season, I was injured, but I though, ‘we’ve got a good squad here, we’re going to make a real go, we’re going to get back into the top half’.

“But it didn’t work out that way. Obviously from the outside of it you can say, ‘bad manager, bad coach, bad owner’. But as players, we’ve got to look at ourselves, we definitely didn’t do well enough under Frank last season and this season just gone as well. I feel a bit sorry for Frank.”