As the walls close in at Everton, Frank Lampard must be wondering in his more lucid moments about this management lark. He had a glittering career as a player, a lovely family, all the money he could ever need. Does he really need this stress?
Lampard will have known he would have a testing few months ahead of him when he took over from Rafa Benitez but he cannot have thought it could be as bad as it has turned out. Seven losses out of nine Premier League games, culminating in the calamitous loss at Burnley on Wednesday, has left Everton and Lampard staring into a ruinous void.
Relegation is bad for any club but for Everton it would be a chamber of horrors. They cannot cover their colossal wage bill as it is; with their income slashed by more than half they would become a financial basket case.
The gleaming new stadium they have in the pipeline is not intended for use in the Championship. To have spent the money they have – £500million in Farhad Moshiri’s six years as sugar daddy – with the intention of breaking into the top four only to end up in the bottom three would border on the criminal.
Yet the direction in travel is resolutely southwards. They are in dangerous waters now. Is Lampard the man to pull them out of it? You have to wonder. Unlike Sean Dyche at Burnley this is not a world he is used to. His limited managerial experience has been exclusively with top-end clubs – at Derby as they chased promotion from the Championship on the never-never and at Chelsea.
Quite why Everton thought he would be a good fit for the predicament they were in when Benitez was shown the door in January was baffling. It was a square peg, round hole appointment made with seemingly no thought as to a possible relegation scrap ahead.
It smacked of a complacent view that Everton’s expensive squad was too good to go down and that Lampard, with his progressive football and eye for young talent, could help shape a bright future. How off the mark that assessment looks now.
The performance in the 5-0 thrashing by Spurs was lamentable; leaking three goals against a Burnley side that hadn’t scored one in their previous four games was shocking. Everton have the seventh-highest wage bill in the Premier League. The squad has turned out to be the worst value in English football, a Mr Potato Head assembly by a succession of contrasting managers of parts that don’t fit.
They have been unfortunate with the absence of Yerry Mina but they have no one to blame but themselves for the mess elsewhere. The waste in the Moshiri years has been eye-watering and the high-profile January window arrivals under Lampard – Dele Alli and Donny van de Beek – questionable answers to the wrong questions. It has been like hiring a butler and a chauffeur for a street fight.
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Because that is what this is now for Everton. They have a horrible sequence of fixtures coming up against Manchester United, Leicester twice, Liverpool and Chelsea which, on present form, is likely to see the prospect of a first relegation since the 50s intensify.
Meanwhile Liverpool sail on gaily in their pursuit of the quadruple. A perfect storm is brewing on Merseyside. If Lampard survives this and manages to pull Everton out of their nose dive he will be a better coach for the experience.
But Everton should never have put themselves in the position where they are a management training course project, the cadaver on the slab for a raw medical student’s fumbling scalpel.
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