MAN CITY v EVERTON

RAFA BENITEZ is leaning on the wise words of former Spain coach Luis Aragones as he looks to inject some much-needed character into his Everton squad.

The Toffees’ mentality has been regularly questioned this season with the late collapses that led to defeats against Aston Villa and Watford cited as prime examples of their fragility.

But, while Benitez admits mentally tough players are not easily found, he picked out midfielders Fabian Delph (right) and Allan (below right) as two men who can help change the mindset at Goodison Park in the short term.

He said: “I always use the expression that Luis Aragones used to say – ‘You cannot buy character on the fifth floor of John Lewis’ – in Spain it was El Corte Ingles.

“That is true, you can talk about [it] but in the end you have to go to the games and perform.

“It’s not the same when you go in a training session and you do well.

“When you have to do it in front of 50,000 fans and you make a mistake, you have to be able to react. When you concede a goal, you have to be able to react.

“That is the most difficult thing and it’s something that you are looking for.

These players of character, normally you can buy them and they are in the top sides or you have to find them.

“We are talking about Delph or Allan for us, they are important players. If you keep these players and win, the people around them will grow in confidence and then it will be easier for me to talk about character [in the squad].”

Asked how he plans to go about addressing Everton’s occasional frailty, Benitez used an example from last week’s training sessions at Finch Farm.

He said: “One thing is to convince the players about what you want to do.

“If they trust you in terms of tactics and approach and you are winning games, then the confidence is growing and growing and you can continue improving things.

“Today, we were talking about that. We had a possession game and one team was losing and then I said, ‘We cannot give up, we have to continue.’

“These kinds of things you can do in every training session. After, if you win the game on Saturday or Sunday, the players have more belief but it takes time.”

Everton’s resilience is sure to be tested when they travel to the home of Premier League champions Manchester City this afternoon.

But Benitez, who pulled off a surprise win over Pep Guardiola’s side during his time at Newcastle, has a plan in place to repeat the trick. He said: “I think that they have so many options in terms of the way they can play. “Everybody knows that they have plenty of possession but they can play counter-attack, they can play with the wingers, with the fullbacks overlapping, through the middle with penetrating passes.

“So they have so many things that they do well that the only way for us is to just make sure we are very strong defensively and that we work in defence as a unit – then we can try to be dangerous in the counter-attack.

“It’s not a secret that they will have the possession and then we have to make sure that we are dangerous in the counter-attack, that’s it.”