Graeme Souness tears into Fabian Delph after Bournemouth defeat

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Everton lost 3-1 at Bournemouth on Sunday afternoon.

Pundit Graeme Souness has told Sky Sports (15/09, 16:02) that he was baffled by Fabian Delph’s attempts to clear Ryan Fraser’s free kick in Everton’s defeat at Bournemouth.

The Toffees have been superb at home of late but struggling on the road, and that was the case once again on Sunday afternoon as they fell to a 3-1 defeat at the Vitality Stadium.

Callum Wilson opened the scoring before Dominic Calvert-Lewin headed Everton level, only for Delph to deflect Fraser’s free kick into the net and Wilson add a third.

Everton will again be gutted to have come up short away from home, and Marco Silva needs to try and find a way to end Everton’s away day blues.

He will be particularly disappointed with the way Everton fell behind for the second time, as Fraser sent in a low free kick from the left, which was coming straight to midfielder Delph.

Delph bizarrely went at the ball with his left foot despite being better placed for a right-footed clearance, and his strange attempt to clear the ball only resulted in him deflecting the ball into his own net.

The summer signing from Manchester City has shown encouraging signs for Everton so far, but now he’s attracting criticism from pundit Souness.

Souness suggested that Delph’s defending was ‘poor’, blasting him for only wanting to use his left foot, claiming that’s not good enough for a Premier League player to be so one-footed and not be willing to use his weaker foot to clear a ball away.

“It was a poor bit of defending by Fabian Delph, because he’s not got a right foot and decided to go with his left foot,” said Souness. “Poor. Just go and put your right foot through it, you’re a Premier League player, you must have practised with your right foot. It’s not good, any way you dress it up, that’s poor, very poor. It’s a simple bit of defending, that’s bread and butter stuff. Don’t take your eye off the ball, give it back to Ryan Fraser, kick it out of the stadium, just make some sort of contact so the ball doesn’t end up in the back of your net,” he added.