Memo to Dyche: Everton have become a stepping-stone on the way down club | Jonathan Wilson

Expectations are way too high and the squad is a mess, as the Goodison club’s latest managerial hiring will soon discover

Jarrod Bowen scored with a header after a corner was half-cleared, then he scored again on a break. “Set-piece second phase, then a counter-attack …” Frank Lampard said wearily afterwards, as though the failings are so familiar to him he has started regarding them as things that just happen, acts of God he can’t be expected to influence any more than he could control the weather or the traffic on the M6.

At other clubs at other times, the criticism would have focused on the way Everton lost at West Ham. Lampard’s teams have always conceded goals from set-plays and counters. But so vast, so all-encompassing, is the Everton crisis that glitches of defensive organisation seem almost trivial.

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