Harry Kane leads Tottenham’s thrashing of Frank Lampard’s inept Everton

Frank Lampard might have arrived in north London hoping to end Everton’s woeful away record, perhaps even, in some of his more feverish dreams, to hear the entire ground rise as one to acclaim his expertise. In the end he kind of got some of the way there. His decisions to bring on first the Ukrainian Vitalii Mykolenko and then the former Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli were greeted with the unique generosity of a crowd that got to cheer five unanswered home goals and enjoy repeated choruses of “Lampard’s going down”.

Everton’s display of defensive haplessness helped Antonio Conte’s unpredictable Spurs side appear like world-beaters, and ended in a scoreline so emphatic it left the club with a goal difference more than doubled in improvement, from plus three to plus eight.

Spurs had not won consecutive league games since early December. Now they return to Manchester, where they beat City last month, to face United on Saturday having won three out of four. Everton meanwhile had not won a Premier League away game since August, part of a run of three wins in their first four since revealed to be the falsest of dawns. By the time they get another chance it will be April.

Before kick-off a local youth choir took to the pitch to sing One Day, an uplifting plea for peace. “It’s not about win or lose,” they sang at one point, as a collection of highly paid athletes gathered in the tunnel for whom it still very much is, “because we all lose when they feed on the souls of the innocent.” The songwriters will not have had Michael Keane and Mason Holgate in mind when they wrote this bit, and the singers were concentrating on a conflict that makes this one look embarrassingly trivial, but some sympathy for hapless centre-backs is