Boro's dismal run of form continued as they were outplayed on
their own patch, with the Toffees prevailing despite their injury
crisis thanks to a Tim Cahill goal which should have been followed
by more from the visitors.
"I am disappointed with the result and we know it was a scrappy
performance," Southgate said one Sky Sports.
"In the run we are on at the moment, we are not flowing as a team,
we worked and worked but we were not good enough on the day to get
back into the game.
"The whole afternoon was edgy, we looked short of confidence - we
have got a lot of hard work ahead of us - we are not in the
position we want to be, but there is no easy way out of this and
the group have to stick together.
"After 20 games last year we had 20 points so we are about where we
were, but other teams around us have improved so we have got to
lift our game. There is a long way to go, and in this league
everyone gets very emotional as we were are three points off
tenth.
"In football you get lots of knock backs and it is how you bounce
back from," he added.
"Whatever happens over the next few weeks, we have got 19 games
left and we have to take as many points as we can, the priority is
to remain in the division.
"There is a lot of doom around the place but there is only us who
can lift that."
Southgate, who saw his team drop down to fourth-from-last as a
result of the loss, the made a statement which was aimed as both a
plea and a warning to the players.
"We need everyone, we need everyone who wants to be here, we need
people to dig in for the cause, dig in for the shirt, dig in for he
club," the ex England defender continued.
"We have got to make sure that we have got people who are prepared
to do that with us, if not then we have to take those things into
consideration - but we have to have a really tight group and they
have to work hard to get us out of this position.
"At the moment, we have to work with the players we have got, five
or six games ago we were on 17-18 points and everyone was very
satisfied."