The glorious chaos of inexpert defending in the Premier League

Ah, Bank Holiday Mondays – the traditional cavalcade of woefully overdone sausages, dangerously underdone chicken legs and ill-advised experiments with vegetables. And this Monday the glorious chaos of inexpert barbecue chef-ery was matched by the glorious chaos of inexpert defending in the Premier League, with 21 goals squirted across three fun-packed affairs like a deluge of lighter fluid across a rack of uncooperative briquettes. In the early kick-off, as the coals began to flame and a few exploratory sausages were sent to a fiery grave, Leicester added another lowlight to their season of shambles at Craven Cottage, the 5-3 scoreline flattered by a couple of late goals as Fulham eased off the throttle. “It’s been one of those seasons,” sighed James Maddison, stretching that particular idiom beyond its usual boundaries. “We were not good enough today and we’ve only got ourselves to blame.”

That left the Foxes poised precariously outside the drop zone with three of the four clubs below them still to play. And, with grills up and down the land hitting that minuscule window of just the right temperature for even cooking, Everton sensed the moment for their seemingly annual late-season relegation swerve, running riot at the Amex to beat high-flying Brighton 5-1 in the most unlikely result of the day and claim their first away win since the start of October. Even the usually-measured Sean Dyche lost the run of himself: “I was very pleased.”

In the evening game, with the ashes cooling and the optimistic among us throwing on a couple of bananas wrapped in silver foil which nobody wants and no one will eat, a Morgan Gibbs-White-inspired Nottingham Forest followed the Toffees out of the bottom three with a 4-3 win over