Survival of Everton and Lampard may hinge on creaking Goodison Park

The average English adult in the 1890s was about four inches shorter than today, and perhaps nowhere is this more evident that when trying to navigate one’s way around Goodison Park.

The ceilings are low, the doorways and gangways narrow, the seating evidently designed with the more compact late-Victorian posterior in mind.

But intimacy also breeds intensity. When the place is full and firing the noise builds and never stops building; nothing is lost and nothing is wasted, and if you are an opposition player caught in the din it can sometimes feel like the touchlines are closing in on you.

Of course, and in more ways than one, Everton arguably outgrew Goodison some years ago. Two miles away at Bramley-Moore, a new 52,000-seat cathedral is rising from the docklands, an imposing monument to a club finally ready to shed its past.

Not so long ago it felt like a logical next step; now it feels more like a gleaming anomaly. With six games to play, Everton are 18th in the Premier League and facing the very real possibility that they may be constructing the most spectacular stadium in the Championship.

Six games to decide this and probably a lot more besides. As Everton’s plight has gradually sharpened, there has been an impulse from many fans, pundits and media outlets to reduce this story to a single personal soap opera: one largely contingent on whether you like Frank Lampard or not.

But relegation from the top flight for the first time in more than seven decades would have far wider implications for Everton, its staff, its people and its city. Everton fan and former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher is only slightly exaggerating when he describes the effect as akin to a bereavement.

Part of the reason there is such a