Everton manager Frank Lampard is encouraged by his first pre-season with the club.
Lampard took over the Goodison Park stadium team towards the end of last season.
The ex-Chelsea boss helped the Toffees avoid relegation, but hopes that new signings and his first pre-season can push them forward.
He told reporters: "It's my first pre-season, when you come in mid-season there are a lot of priorities, the next game and the next game and results and we all saw that unravel.
"Now it's about 'how can we be better to not be in that position again?' It starts here with the hard work. We can't lose a day, we can't lose a moment. I have to say the players have been great since we've been back.
"The first training session this morning, the players were spot-on. It was really hot, a hard session, and the attitude was exactly what I'd want so I'm very happy so far.
"That's how it has to be. A team has to be together from the first moments to the end and I thought we saw in our run-in last season there is a togetherness here and it wasn't just the players, it was the whole club.
"It's something we have to take as our responsibility, to be together, to perform, to show desire and for that we need to be a fit team. We need to be a team with a big capacity to run.
"An Everton team has to have that because it has to show energy, it has to show desire, so the building blocks are here in this trip and building into the season."
Lampard added: "Now it's my chance to make it my team as such or how I want my team to look. That's how we work on the training ground and how we can set those ideas in from the beginning of pre-season and also the personnel of how we try and build and mould the squad and make changes to make it improve and feel like something that can take the club forward and change the direction of results from last season in general but also in performance and style of play.
"We'll do it in steps. We can't expect next year we're going to go to the moon, it won't be that process from where we were last year, it will be a process of what's the first thing we can improve and then keep on improving and that's where we're at now."
