Sean Dyche explains Everton’s pre-season injury issues as seven players could miss Brighton.

Everton had numerous injury problems during the summer period.

Sean Dyche has insisted there is no exact reason behind why Everton have suffered so many injuries in pre-season.

The Toffees raise the curtain on their 2024-25 Premier League campaign against Brighton & Hove Albion at Goodison Park on Saturday. However, during the summer period, Everton have had several fitness issues to contend with.

The likes of James Tarkowski, Idrissa Gana Gueye, Iliman Ndiaye and Abdoulaye Doucoure have all missed some games. Meanwhile, captain Seamus Coleman and James Garner (both calf) are doubtful to face Brighton while Michael Keane missed the previous two friendlies.

In addition, Youssef Chermiti underwent foot surgery last week and Jarrad Branthwaite had a minor groin operation at the start of the summer and is set to miss the game. Nathan Patterson continues his recovery from a long-term hamstring problem along with Stanley Mills (knee).

But Dyche believes that the busy friendly fixture schedule ‘magnified’ Eveton’s minor fitness issues and the club have ensured that none of the problems have become serious.

Speaking after last week’s 1-1 draw against AS Roma, the Blues manager said: “It’s one of those things. It’s very rare you can do anything about the serious ones. We’re just trying to protect the niggly ones. Different weathers, different pre-seasons, different styles, different players don’t forget, different players coming in. You can never quite – if it was easy enough to scientifically extract all the information and make it right, everyone pre-season would be brilliant and you wouldn’t have any injuries.

“Sometimes, you’re in the lap of the gods a little bit. But the players are fit, they’ve come back fit so I’m happy with that. Sometimes, you just have to go: ‘It’s one of those things’ but fortunately we’ve not had too many serious ones. They’ve just missed a week, 10 days but it feels different in pre-season because you might miss two or three games in a week. That sometimes enhances they haven’t played in them games because you need them. That’s all it is, it just magnifies it a bit more.”