Everton's delusions of grandeur have taken them to the brink

The timing of a new Dominic Calvert-Lewin fashion photoshoot for GQ magazine is unfortunate, to say the least.

The Everton striker 'is bringing fashion back to football', states a headline above a piece in which he declares himself a 'standard-bearer for new flamboyance'. He hasn't scored a goal since August.

There's been a delusion of grandeur about the club for the six years since Farhad Moshiri arrived and started splashing £500million on players in a way which has lacked sense or strategy.

The present squad is, as a recent When Saturday Comes analysis of their predicament put it, 'a Frankenstein composite of eight managers and two directors of football'.

A list of some of the players signed for more than £20m since 2016 says everything about the state Everton are in: Davy Klaassen, Cenk Tosun, Theo Walcott, Yannick Bolasie, Morgan Schneiderlin, Alex Iwobi, Andre Gomes, Jean-Philippe Gbamin and Moise Kean.

On Wednesday, Everton will feel the consequences of that gross mismanagement like never before. They run out at Burnley in a game on which their Premier League survival could depend.

They have secured fewer points away from home than any other team in the division this season, last won on the road in August and seven of their subsequent nine games are against top-half teams, including Liverpool and Chelsea.

It would help if Frank Lampard were shaping up to be a saviour. He seems anything but. Some of his players are understood to feel there is no consistent game plan and an absence of clear communication. Some of his former senior players at Chelsea felt precisely the same.

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The shifting shapes of his team formation have not helped. There’s been a