Everton's director of football has asked supporters to "stick with us" as the manager addresses the team's poor form.

The Blues have made an awful start to the season, losing all four of their opening League games and were dumped out of the Carabao Cup last Tuesday by fellow strugglers Southampton in a penalty shootout.

There is mounting angst among supporters and fears that manager Sean Dyche may not be able to put a stop to the bad sequence of results.

Speaking to BBC Merseyside, Thelwell said.

"I can promise everybody that there is no stone being left unturned in terms of trying to rectify our current situation. [The manager] is working under very difficult circumstances.

"We still have ownership and financial situations to resolve so that makes it very difficult for a manager when we want to take that next step.

“It’s not easy [to stay calm] because we all get emotional, don't we? It's stressful and we all want Everton to be winning games. We’d much prefer to be at the other end of the table and chilling out, but that's not our reality at the moment.

“So all you can do is you can just look back at your method and you look back at the analysis of some of the bits that you did and there's obviously some bits that we've done well in these games and bits that we haven’t done so well. So we’re going to work as hard as we can to try and rectify those things as quickly as possible.

"Hopefully, [when the likes of Jarrad Branthwaite and Nathan Patterson return] we'll see a difference in the results. Some of the performances have been good. I know people find it hard to look past those results but there’s actually been some positives in the games.

“I think one of the things we talked about last year was how we were finding it difficult in having an attacking threat but with Dwight [McNeil] moving centrally … and Iliman Ndiaye coming into the team, we look different from an attacking perspective.

“I appreciate, then, the bit that was so good for us last year, the defensive bit, now needs some resolution. So Sean and the coaching team will work hard on those problems and I’ll work as hard as I can with the support staff to support them to do that.

“Stick with us. I appreciate it’s a difficult time. We’re all feeling that pain that you're feeling but we just need to stay calm and stay patient and we hope that we're able to resolve some of these problems.

“I’ve said it before — what we're all fighting for is a team that Evertonians can be proud of. I appreciate that only comes when you win, so we'll work hard, as hard as we possibly can, to win but we’re also gonna need your help to get there.

“There's no doubt about that, because off the pitch we have got some problems to solve. Everybody can see that and it's still very, very difficult to work at this football club. And I appreciate it's also very difficult to support this club in this moment in time. But we only get through this if we stick together.”

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