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The managerial career of Frank Lampard is sailing ever further from his planned destination. Can he recover if he takes Everton down?

Everton really might actually get relegated this season.

This isn’t news, and they’ve been conspicuously dreadful for really quite a long time now. We all should be ready for this. And yet it’s only now after that 3-2 defeat to Burnley that it feels like a real thing that could actually happen.

It’s quite dizzying. They’re not just Premier League ever-presents; they’ve been in the top flight since the 1950s. Most of us have never known English football without Everton in the highest division, even those of us impossibly ancient enough to remember the ’90s and noughties when they gave it a decent crack.

This latest and far less expected attempt feels both surreal and painfully real. They are the team tumbling into trouble rather than a side fighting their way out. It’s always those dragged in that you fear for; they’re not prepared for it. Burnley have been scrapping since getting promoted but this is relatively new for this iteration of Everton.

And it is surreal because only 18 months ago a fun and free-flowing Everton side made such an eye-catchingly brilliant start to the inherently weird 2020/21 season that it was only slightly rather than entirely insane