Everton have seven weeks to avoid whole new world of pain after £120m blow

As the Premier League returns this weekend make no mistake: Everton are in a relegation battle.

That may be a grim note to begin with, but the sooner everyone realises it, the more it may focus minds. The supporters know, of course. Who isn’t going to bed staring at a fixture list and trying to plot a path to survival?

The club has pulled itself from the brink of the unthinkable before in the Premier League era, both in 1994 and - by a whisker - in 1998. But past heroics mean nothing now and the danger is a real one for a club currently on course to endure its worst ever top flight season.

Relegation would be a disaster. While Norwich have become bounce-back specialists, and Fulham look set for an immediate return, there are far more clubs that have either continued their decline or simply become bogged down in the highly-competitive, combative, sometimes brutal, Championship.

With Everton’s accounts revealing a £120.9m loss for the 2020/21 campaign, the hit on commercial, transfer and broadcast business that relegation would bring is substantial. It would certainly undermine a lot of the rebalancing work the club says it is in the process of doing. Covid has already had what bosses described as a “dramatic” financial impact. The Championship would be a whole new world of pain.

The good news is Everton’s destiny is in the club’s own hands. While seven weeks of anxiety, tension and uncertainty await, with 11 remaining fixtures there is close to a third of the season left for the Blues. Only Burnley - four points adrift and having already repeatedly failed to use additional games to overhaul Everton - can say the same.

The three games in hand on Leeds and Brentford mean they could still be pulled back into trouble, but