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This summer Everton will visit Kenya to play a showpiece friendly and, as someone who loves to travel and experience new places, I am really looking forward to playing my first game in a country that is so passionate about football.
We will be heading to Nairobi on Sunday, July 7 to contest the SportPesa Trophy against Kariobangi Sharks.
Two years ago, Everton became the first Premier League club to play a game in East Africa, when the club faced Gor Mahia in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
I joined Everton just a few weeks later, in August 2017, and from speaking to my teammates, they really enjoyed the experience of visiting a country which many of them had never been to before and, of course, the warm welcome they received when they were there.
Now we have another opportunity to head back to Africa and, in addition to the match itself against Kariobangi Sharks, I know everyone in the travelling Everton party will be looking forward to meeting football fans in Kenya and discovering more about the local culture and traditions.
However, before we can start to plan for that, we are focused on finishing this season in the best possible fashion.
Results have been going well for us recently, particularly at Goodison Park where we have collected 10 points from our previous four home matches against Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United. We are playing with lots of confidence and I think we have really found something that has been working for us. Hopefully that will continue over the remaining fixtures against Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur.
A fortnight ago, against Manchester United, I was naturally pleased to score my 14th goal of the season in all competitions. Overall, I feel it’s been a good season for me personally. Of course, I’d always like to score more goals - if you ask any footballer that question, they will always say the same! But to net that amount of goals is something for me to build on for next season.
Creating assists is an important part of my game too, especially in the position that I play. Those statistics are something that I look for, to see how many chances I have managed to create for my teammates. I’ve got five assists this season, so hopefully there’s still room for one or two more before the final whistle is blown against Tottenham next weekend.
At the base of our good form recently has been the defensive work from the team, highlighted by five clean sheets in our last six fixtures, which is a significant improvement from earlier in the season.
It helps massively when you are keeping clean sheets and makes it easier to win games - it means that if you score just one or two goals, you will win games. We’ve defended well from the front and every player is working hard. As a unit, opponents are finding it hard to break us down.
Even last weekend against Crystal Palace, I thought we did everything we could to score. Perhaps we would have lost that game if it had been played a few months ago, whereas now we are a lot stronger defensively and more resilient. We made sure that if we couldn’t win that game, we weren’t going to lose it.
So, now, the ambition is to finish the Premier League campaign strongly, and to build on this run of results. We want to sign off in front of our home supporters, under the famous Goodison Park floodlights, with another stylish performance against Burnley.
Of course, European football next season is what we want to achieve and it still remains possible. We will be doing everything we can in these final two matches to make that happen.
Gylfi Sigurdsson is a midfielder at Everton FC.
