Everton: Are the Toffees too bad to stay in the Premier League?

Everton's long-time status in the top flight has acted as a brittle shield against their painful decline, their trademark protection of being «too good to go down» being tested time and again.

Yet it is a theory riddled with flaws and, after their 5-0 capitulation at Tottenham Hotspur, the more pertinent question must be: are Everton too bad to stay up?

Frank Lampard inherited a mess when he succeeded sacked Rafa Benitez and very quickly learned just how bad things are in away defeats at Newcastle United and Southampton.

This, however, was another level of incompetence, and a wake-up call for anyone still labouring under the misapprehension that Everton can escape relegation because they have always done so before.

Everton are already in the dangerous territory of hoping three teams will be worse than themselves, because if this is the standard of effort and performance they put in between now and the end of the season, their own efforts will take them down.

Lampard made the point about how Everton react badly to adversity following the loss at Southampton and it looked very much like they threw the towel in again once Michael Keane turned Ryan Sessegnon's cross unerringly into his own net after 14 minutes before goalkeeper Jordan Pickford blundered to allow Son Heung-min to make it two three minutes later.

The hardy band of Everton fans might as well have started checking the train times from Euston right then because the history of this team tells them things were only going to get worse. And they did.

Harry Kane made it three before half-time, substitute Sergio Reguilon scored with his first touch seconds after half-time, finishing with such ease you wondered whether Everton were aware he had replaced Sessegnon.