Everton manager Roberto Martinez has hit back at claims that his side have a weakness when it comes to crosses, according to the Liverpool Echo.
There has been criticism aimed at the Blues for conceding a number of goals from crosses into the box.
However, Martinez has blamed bad defending rather than a specific weakness that teams are exploiting.
Everton lost 3-2 to West Ham at the weekend and looked particularly bad when defending from crosses, with Andy Carroll and Diafra Sakho causing plenty of problems for the Ramiro Funes Mori and Phil Jagielka.
Speaking after the match, Martinez said:
When we were 11 against 11, we were the better team and scored the goal to go ahead. Then we had to change things tactically and with 10 men you wouldn’t have seen a difference – it was like we had the extra man.
Then we scored another goal from open play and controlled the game completely and never got done on crosses in that period.
It’s more that we felt we had something to lose. Winning the penalty was a massive high but then missing it was an emotional low, and all of a sudden we gave West Ham momentum that unfortunately they got a big reward from.
It’s not like they bombarded the box. They had two crosses and scored two goals, that’s bad defending rather than having a (specific) weakness.
Martinez’s men have been susceptible to aerial balls all season long and his side need to sort something out at the back if they are to stop conceding sloppy goals and start picking up points in the Premier League.
