James Tarkowski returns from injury against West Ham United

James Tarkowski has made his return from injury in Everton’s 2-1 loss to West Ham United at Soldier Field in Chicago on Wednesday. He came off the bench in the 69th minute in the Blues’ second Premier League Summer Series fixture in the United States.

This was the first appearance for the Everton vice-captain after he suffered a torn hamstring in a Premier League match against Manchester City in April. Tarkowski spent the entire summer working hard on his rehabilitation along with the club’s medical team and physios.

“It was nice to be back,” the defender told evertontv. “I mean, I’d like to return with us winning 4-0 and just ease into it. But these are competitive Premier League matches, so it’s nice to be back out there. There’s been a lot of hard work over the past three months or so and it all comes to fruition to get back onto the pitch.

“We never really put an exact time on it because we weren’t really sure how my body was going to heal, but like I said, a lot of hard work, not just from myself, but from the physios and the sport scientists here to give me every possible chance of being back for the start of the season.

“We’re well on track for doing that. We have the final few weeks [of pre-season] to go and get more fitness in and hopefully more game time.”

Keeping clean sheets has been difficult for the Blues in the pre-season so far. They have conceded goals in every single game and have already let in five goals in two matches of the Summer Series after losing 3-0 to Bournemouth earlier.

The absence of Tarkowski, along with his defensive partner Jarrad Branthwaite and captain Seamus Coleman, has been noticeable, and the 32-year-old is eyeing a return to defensive stability.

“Hopefully, we can get some stability back again because we’ve conceded a few goals in the past couple of games. And the stability of the defence has been the way we’ve built our performances and picked up points. So hopefully that continues this season.”

Against Bournemouth and West Ham, players were guilty of making several defensive errors. In the first friendly against Bournemouth, Nathan Patterson failed to clear a ball cleanly, while Jake O’Brien’s backpass to his goalkeeper Jordan Pickford was weak, leading to goals. 

In the match against West Ham, Mark Travers failed to punch the ball away from danger which led to Lucas Paqueta’s equaliser after Idrissa Gana Gueye had opened the scoring.

“We’ve just made some errors,” added Tarkowski. “I’ve made mistakes so I’m in there just telling the lads to move on quickly from it. There’s just been a lot of simple mistakes. It’s pre-season so if we’re going to do them, let’s do them now and get them out of the way. Because apart from that, we’re well in the game against West Ham. It’s time to stop making mistakes and hopefully we’ll pick up some results.

“I think it’s obviously a small group. You can see we’ve got quite a few young lads here with us, so the lads are getting a lot of minutes on the pitch at the minute, which is nice for them, but it’s obvious we’re going to sign players at some point. I’m sure there’ll be a few more numbers to come through the door before the start of the season.

“Our focus now is for a good game on Sunday. Our fans are amazing, they travel all over the world to watch us so hopefully we’ll go out there and put on a performance and get a win as well.”

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