Everton in peril after Liverpool fan Conor Coady secures victory for Wolves

Cliff Britton was trending last week. There was no such thing as trending when Britton died in 1975, or for several decades afterwards, but he was the last manager to get Everton relegated.

The possibility that Frank Lampard will be the next looms ever larger after a 1-0 defeat at home to Wolves. Demoted in 1951, ever present in the top flight since 1954, Everton are now out of the bottom three only on goal difference. Wins for Watford and Leeds compounded an awful day for them.

For Lampard, it was a fourth straight defeat. For Everton, it made it just two wins in 20. They have been hovering perilously close to the drop zone for a while but now the gap has grown to the teams above them.

“The only thing that matters is to stay up,” Lampard said. “We have to have the absolute desire and fight to get out of this. It has been a long time that we haven’t been winning enough games and that doesn’t change overnight.” He detected improvement after a 5-0 thrashing by Spurs. “It wasn’t more worrying than Tottenham,” he insisted. “We lost against a good team in a tight match with 10 men for the last period.”

Yet it was a match that had looked more winnable and they lost. The side with the worst away record in the country had a still greater need for points at home. They got none against Wolves, whose reward was to jump ahead of Tottenham. They got booed off at the end.

Conor Coady’s goal separated the sides, and the celebrations from a Liverpool supporter and former Liverpool player were understandably emphatic, but the difference lay just as much in the class of Ruben Neves. “Ruben has the talent to be the top of the top,” said his manager Bruno Lage.

Everton felt outclassed. They ended up outnumbered. Jonjoe Kenny was sent off