Director of football Marcel Brands says that Everton are now playing the style of football that he and manager Marco Silva want.
The Blues enjoyed a strong finish to the 2018/19 season and were third in the form table behind title rivals Manchester City and Liverpool over the last eight games.
The run included home wins over Chelsea (2-0); Arsenal (1-0) and Manchester United (4-0) and with the fixtures for the 2019/20 campaign having been released, Brands believes the team can use the displays from such outings as a platform for the coming months.
He told evertontv: “In the final months of last season, you saw the style of play that we want to play.
“ Marco and his staff worked hard on that.
“The style of play was coming more to all the players. It gave us the results and results give confidence.
“That was good to see and hopefully we can continue when we start the Premier League again in August.
“The fixtures have been announced, which is always a special moment, and I was very curious to see it.
“We have some special things. In the first six games, we have two promoted teams [Aston Villa and Sheffield United].
“I think the start of the season is really important.
“We also have a very tough December month, when we play lot of top teams and have a lot of big challenges.”
Everton have been handed two separate sequences of four-consecutive games against last season's top six – in December against Liverpool (a); Chelsea (h); Manchester United (a) and Arsenal (h) then in February and March, Arsenal (a); Manchester United (h); Chelsea (a) and Liverpool (h) but Brands believes the side is now capable of competing against such opponents.
He said: “It was very good to see that the team can rise to those challenges.
“I think it was also good for the fans to see we have the confidence to beat them.
“That will also be the goal next season.
“The fixture list is interesting, you get them [difficult games] anyway and now we get them all after each other.
“It is a tough period, but we want to continue to do well in those matches.”
