Everton captain Phil Neville has insisted that the Toffees will recover from Sunday's disappointing 1-0 defeat at Fulham.The Toffees went down 1-0 at Craven Cottage and are now three points behind city rivals Liverpool in the race for fourth spot.
Club captain Neville admits that the squad were frustrated to have dropped points at a vital stage of the season, but expects there to be many more twists and turns before the campaign comes to a close in eight games time.
"Experience tells you that other teams are going to drop points between now and the end of the season," the England international told the Liverpool Echo.
"Whether you're going for the league or the Champions League, teams will drop points and it's how you compose yourselves when you drop those points and how you bounce back that's the true measure.
"Yes, we're hurting, but next weekend brings a whole new batch of fixtures.
"We've got a home game (against West Ham), Liverpool have an away game (at Manchester United), Portsmouth and Villa have tough games, so it's about what we do and how we bounce back.
"All along we've always said that Liverpool are favourites.
"There's still a lot of football to go and the good thing is that we now have a week off without a game and we can bounce back."
Neville also saw Andrew Johnson add to the club's growing injury list against the Cottagers, but refused to blame exhaustion from a gruelling Uefa Cup tie against Fiorentina on the previous Wednesday for a lacklustre Toffees performance.
"Losing AJ was a blow," he admitted.
"The squad's a bit thin at the moment. We've got to make sure those players who are injured get back as quickly as possible.
"I don't think tiredness was a problem after Wednesday. I'd hate to use that as an excuse. We lacked quality rather than effort.
"We had virtually three days without any kind of physical training which is enough time to recover.
"Out there that final pass, that final ball let us down and that's something which hasn't let us down all season.
"Hopefully we can get back onto it next week."
More Football News from TEAMtalk
