Beaglehole Disappointed By Second-Half Performance
- Leicester City's Development Squad suffered their first league defeat of the season at the hands of Everton on Monday evening
- Three second half goals proved to be the difference at Southport
- Steve Beaglehole felt City's performance after the break was below their usual standards
- It is only one blip after a series of positive displays, the Club's Senior Professional Development Phase Coach added
The Toffees took control of a tight encounter in the final half an hour, scoring three times and inflicting a first Premier League 2 Division 1 reverse on the Foxes.
Callum Connolly, Ellis Simms and Josh Bowler were all on the scoresheet in Southport, as City failed to build on last week's impressive 2-0 victory over Manchester United.
Beaglehole felt that the team did not do enough in the second half to warrant taking anything from the game.
"I sung their praises last week, after a terrific performance, saying it's probably one of the best performances I've seen from the team in four years," he told LCFC TV after the game.
"I thought Ali Reghba worked hard up front, really worked hard, and got on the end of stuff. I'm looking at [Jakub Stolarczyk], I thought he was good again, consistent.
"And then after that, players have just dropped below the standard that I said to you last week. That's the bar and that's what we expect from them."
The scores were even at the break, with both sides having gone close to breaking the deadlock in the first period.
While City ultimately fell to defeat, Beaglehole believes it is just one below-par performance after a run of impressive displays stretching back to last season.
"It happens, but when you lose games, you don't want to lose them in that magnitude," he added. "I didn't see that coming at half-time, I thought it was a very tight game, one goal possibly might win it.
"But if you take your foot off the gas in this game, there's always somebody ready to punish you. It's the development side of it, they've got to look at their individual clips and see where they've gone wrong.
"We said before the game, the Man Utd game is finished with, this game is now finished with.
Everton U23s 3 Leicester City U23s 0
Watch the full highlights from Monday night's Premier League 2 defeat by Everton in Southport.
"They've been great in pre-season, there's some good players in there, we know that, and they've not shown the real quality tonight.
"But that's one blip in a number of games, including last season, where we've gone on and played exceptionally well."
City's Development Squad face Blackburn Rovers in their next league fixture and Beaglehole wants to see an improved performance when they travel to Lancashire on Monday (7pm BST kick-off).
He continued: "Sometimes when the players are not performing well and the things aren't going well for you, you learn more about them.
"We've had a great pre-season, played exceptionally well in all the games. Our game prep has been exactly the same as it was last week."