Frank Lampard restores Everton pride but curious situation emerges

It’s said that the darkest hour is just before dawn and Everton currently find themselves in a paradoxical situation of short term peril while maintaining long term hope under Frank Lampard.

It’s still less than a month since Lampard first walked through the entrance door at Finch Farm – on transfer deadline day no less – but he and his staff have been a breath of fresh air at Everton ever since.

Although a Londoner who spent the majority of his playing career in the capital, winning multiple honours with Chelsea – including scoring the winner against Everton in the club’s last cup final in 2009 – might at first glance have appeared to be an unlikely unifying force at what just prior to his arrival was a deeply fractured Goodison Park, the 43-year-old now has everyone connected with the Blues, both on and off the pitch, pulling in the same direction.

Even fans’ idol Duncan Ferguson’s presence in the dugout as caretaker manager against Aston Villa could not prevent a fervent post-match sit-in protest against the club’s hierarchy at the ground and the prospect of the circus that could have followed Vitor Pereira’s arrival after the car crash television created by the Portuguese journeyman’s on-air phone call to Sky Sports doesn’t bear thinking about.

The new regime in the Everton dugout – and there’s a highly-accomplished backroom team behind Lampard - have restored pride and passion.

The team are actually attempting to play something that resembles in some sense ‘The School of Science’ or anything that the long-suffering supporters might actually appreciate and put some new life into what some have described as Rafa Benitez’s ‘zombie football’ that got them into this mess in the first place, sleepwalking towards the