Hello there,

Well I think the most important thing to let everyone know is that there is certainly no panic at Everton at the moment.

Obviously the results haven’t gone the way we would have liked them to have gone so far and we are disappointed but there is going to be no knee jerk reaction.

We are convinced that when we get certain players fit and get a settled side, we will climb up the table.

Do I take it personally? Yes, very much so. One defeat you can kind of accept, but when it goes beyond that, you do tend to take it over into your home life. I am always thinking about things and thinking about ways I can improve as an individual.

At times like this you should look at yourself first and ask: ‘Am I doing enough?’ That’s the type of question I am asking myself at the moment, not only on the training ground but when I go home too.

I definitely think that when things aren’t going to plan, it’s up to the experienced players to lead by example; to show a good attitude at training and lift the other players.

I can remember from when I was a young player how defeat can affect you. So it is up to us to lift and focus the young players for our next game which is against Wigan on Saturday.

Speaking of the Premier League, I think that all this coverage of the League losing its popularity has been over-exaggerated to say the least.

I believe we still have the most exciting league in the world. If you had have spoken to some experts ten years ago, when we were just fighting our way back into Europe, they would have praised the Italian League and its tactical awareness. The comment used to be 'there aren’t so many goals in Italy but the intelligence of the game makes it fascinating.'

Now our League has got to that technical level but we have still got the same excitement.

People have talked about the Liverpool v Man United game last weekend as being boring but I think it was a great tactical battle.

With the mixture of the foreign coaches that have brought new things to our game and the young British coaches coming through now too, our league is getting stronger and stronger. To say that the Premier League is boring is, I think, a little bit disrespectful.

Clubs have realised that in Europe you have to be a lot tighter than you do in the Premier League. What perhaps has changed is that instead of clubs playing one team or formation in Europe and another one domestically, they now tend to want to keep a consistency between the two. That system tends to be 4-3-3 or 4-5-1, depending on how you look at it.

That’s the most popular system at the moment. Personally, in the past I have always been a massive fan of 4-4-2 but when you are playing as a 4-4-2 against a 4-3-3 you can find it extremely hard to content with, so we have seen that shift to 4-3-3.

That’s why it really made me laugh when people said that the England players found the system foreign when we played with it last month. Practically every one of the England players is probably playing with or has played with that system at club level this season.

Anyway, have a good weekend, and I’ll catch up with you in a couple of weeks.

Phil Neville