If Everton owner Farhad Moshiri was sticking to the tried and tested crisis club playbook, Frank Lampard would not make it to Saturday’s huge game at West Ham.
With vitriol aimed at decision makers at the top spilling into something altogether more alarming over the weekend, there is a desperate need to do something – anything – to change an agenda that is spiralling out of the club’s control.
Removing Lampard would fulfil that criteria, with no shortage of survival specialists like Sean Dyche or, in time, maybe David Moyes himself to give supporters something to cling to.
Only that is not the plan for the week as Everton try to salvage a season in tailspin. i understands that barring a huge U-turn Moshiri plans to stick by the vote of confidence given to Lampard last week as the club’s embattled board hope to press on with trying to reinforce a squad that – as it stands – looks a sure bet for a potentially disastrous relegation.
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With Lampard set to get Saturday at least it feels like recruitment is now of critical importance to a club in one of the worst moments of its modern history.
Everton have found the transfer window tough so far, missing out on strikers Danny Ings and Georginio Rutter – who has signed for relegation rivals Leeds instead.
They will hope talks with Atalanta’s experienced Colombia striker Duzan Zapata over a loan move with an option to buy in the summer, which are claimed to be advanced by Italian sources, reach a successful conclusion to offer some small sliver of hope to an embattled squad.
Lampard, understandably, wants players ready to hit the ground running, which is why a link to Michail Antonio of West Ham makes sense and the appeal of Newcastle’s Ryan Fraser – who is available at St James’ Park and has been offered – may yet grow. They are short-term solutions but Everton must roll the dice.
After the dust settles on an unprecedented weekend at Goodison Park, the bonds between the club and its people seem stretching to breaking point.
Those behind the sit-in campaign have certainly made their collective voice heard but at the edges of it – and not condoned by the NS Now group running it – the discontent is being expressed in totally unacceptable ways.
Analysis: This is not all on Lampard
By Daniel Storey, i chief football writer
A broken club. For weeks, months, years, this has been building. On Saturday, mutiny and civil war reared its ugly head. A great number of people crossed the line, and their behaviour was unacceptable. But everyone else, who kept their peace but still made their points, have been crushed by the ineptitude that has seeped into every crack at Goodison Park.
That disarray, that misery, has made Frank Lampard’s job harder, no doubt. But it has also provided him with an escape clause, mitigation for the fiercest criticism that could have come his way and, quite frankly (pun not intended) his performance in this job merits. Lampard’s best attribute was not being Rafael Benitez. It turns out that isn’t a particularly stable foundation on which to build progress or even delay the emergency.
Lampard was appointed with Everton 16th in the Premier League and four points above the bottom three, Benitez sacked because things had surely reached a nadir. In almost 12 months since, Lampard has been given five new players at a cost of £70m and two England international central defenders on low-cost deals (one free transfer, one season-long loan). Everton were forced into selling Richarlison, but the squad should have been better this season. Lampard’s trick was making these new signings look like poor players. Honestly, they aren’t.
Lampard now has a loss percentage of 53.5 per cent as Everton manager. Not only will that almost certainly take them into the Championship if he stays, it is also a worse percentage than any other permanent manager in Everton’s entire history.
The point is this: this is not all on Lampard and nobody is saying as much. He is, in part, paying for the multitude and magnitude of the poor decisions that came before him. But one of those mistakes was in appointing a relative novice for a task that required experience and specific expertise. Everton needed some certainty. They opted for a manager about whom it is still impossible to know what his greatest strengths are.
This is an excerpt from The Score, Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on every Premier League club. Click here to read this week’s edition or click here to get it sent straight to your inbox on a Monday morning.
Everton’s four-person board were ordered to stay away on safety grounds on Saturday, a desperate and depressing development. And videos of supporters confronting players as they left the ground – with Anthony Gordon barracked by a handful of fans inside his car – were sickening.
The fear now is that it will impact the players, with insiders admitting confidence is subterranean in the dressing room, and attempts to bring in players who might think twice after seeing the footage.
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Nobody would doubt that there are some legitimate reasons for discontent and that fans have a right to express them in a peaceful way. But those supporters who crossed a line need to realise that their misdirected anger is hurting and harming the club they purport to love. It is that simple.
Lampard, for all his off-the-field attributes, doesn’t seem any closer to finding a solution with Everton pulled between the temptation to tighten things up so as not to concede the soft goals that are harming them and piling more resources into adding to their meagre 15-goal total this season.
The facts are alarming: It was the fifth straight home defeat and the second that has come against a team that started the match bottom of the league. They have won a single game since 1 October.
Those close to situation wonder whether he or his backroom team have the nasty edge required to helm a club that feels fundamentally broken. He is still a relative novice and little of what he has done in management so far could prepare him for Everton’s dire predicament.
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