Everton won 2-0 at Birmingham on Saturday and moves out of the bottom three of the Premier League.
“It was vital for us to get off the mark,” he told the Liverpool Echo.
“I couldn’t have imagined facing the next couple of weeks still having not won and it would have been torture really in some ways.
“We’re not going to try to kid ourselves and pretend it doesn’t matter, because it does.
“We want to be higher up the table. The win over Birmingham will hopefully give us the springboard to do that.”
