Everton just can’t catch a break

It’s not the greatest time to be a fan of Everton Football Club. Admittedly, that’s something that could have been said at pretty much any point during the last 9,776 days – the amount of time elapsed since the club lifted their last trophy, less a week to factor in a brief period of contentment following the winning of that 1995 FA Cup – but here we are. Oh the Ev! Oh Joe, Howard, Walter, David, Roberto, Ronald, Sam, Marco, Carlo and Rafa! Those parvenus across the park have just lifted their 16th trophy during your drought! How on earth has it come to this for the School of Science?

They just can’t catch a break, is how. On the field, they’re mired in relegation bother, hovering inches above the drop zone, a precarious position where every single point is crucial. That may explain why referee chief Mike Riley has personally apologised to latest boss Frank Lampard for the fiasco last Saturday which saw box-bound Manchester City midfielder Rodri catch the ball, bounce it, cuddle it, spin it on his finger in the Harlem Globetrotter style, and theatrically hold it aloft and address it as Yorick, only for VAR operative Chris Kavanagh to somehow miss the entire performance and wave play on. An egregious mistake on the face of it, though you try getting a full and proper view of the screen when your boots are up on the desk.

If that’s not bad enough, things are taking a sour turn off the pitch as well. Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov has had his assets frozen on account of his being, according to the EU, “a pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin”. One of those assets, USM, a holding company specialising in telecoms, metals, mining and Sheriff Fatman earworms, sponsors