Everton have survived but unless there is an overhaul they are delaying their day of reckoning

It would have been no surprise if at 6.31pm the British Geological Survey recorded some serious seismic activity around Liverpool L4.

The noise at the final whistle at Everton was piercing, the scenes pandemonium, the relief overwhelming as this grand old stadium shook and the fans flooded onto the turf.

Before the result was confirmed this could have been the final Premier League game ever at Goodison Park, scheduled to be their home for just one more season, and goodness knows what the future would have held for Everton if they had been relegated.

And yet while this great club survived it has far from saved itself. The chant of “sack the board” rang around, moments later, and there were even more after the stadium announcer invited the fans to leave.

There would be no lap of appreciation, no celebration from the Everton players or manager Sean Dyche, no communion, just a three-deep thick yellow line of police officers along half-way and dozens more bunched around the penalty area in front of the Gwladys Street End.

There had been the pitch invasion, with Conor Coady and James Tarkowski eventually extricating themselves amid the plumes of blue smoke, but it was quickly cleared. Instead, thousands of Evertonians stood not knowing whether to stay or go; not knowing what to chant or sing. Everyone appeared drained and not just from the game that had been played.

Within 20 minutes of it ending the fans were filing out and the primal noise was replaced by what? By a strange silence. The tannoy had long been turned off; the season was over, the team had stayed up but the future is so desperately uncertain.

This is such a deeply fractured club and what happened after the match encapsulated that. It is a club where unless things change, unless there is a regime change, an ownership change, a new board and a new approach no one would be surprised if Everton find themselves in this sorry predicament this time next year. The rot is set.

Re-set is an over-used word in football but it is exactly what Everton need because they are beginning to circle the sink hole far too often and, history has shown, that only ends in one way unless there is a complete change of direction .

After all, Everton were in the same stupid predicament this time last year as they saved themselves in the final home game and the then manager Frank Lampard was scaling the stand to the directors’ box. There was no point Sean Dyche even attempting that as no Everton owner was there; no director either and no fan would have welcomed it.

After that win against Crystal Palace, there were choruses of “Spirit of the Blues”. This time they came only before and during the game. Not afterwards. Dyche had pleaded with the supporters to park their grievances and get behind the team and they did just that. But they did not forget them.

“As long as they are behind us we will never let them down,” is a line from the song but while that loyalty has come from the terraces it has been in short supply out on the pitch and even less in the ownership and the suits running the club.

Everton have let themselves down time and time again.

Even so next season will now be their 70th^th consecutive campaign in the top-flight, a run only bettered by Arsenal, which is all the more extraordinary given the uncertainty that is gripping and paralyzing the club.

The uncertainty extends from the dressing room – this team is just not good enough – the dug-out – is the manager either? – and most certainly to the boardroom where Farhad Moshiri cannot sell up quickly enough for the fans and where time is surely over for chairman Bill Kenwright and chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale.

“There have been negative connotations about everything since I have been here,” Dyche said which, although true, appeared to be externalizing the problems that exist although, in fairness, he added “we have got to demand more internally”. Good luck with that unless there is a more fundamental change above him because far better managers than Dyche have failed to do it on their own.

Moshiri is in talks with two US-based investment groups, MSP Sports Capital and 777 Football Group, regarding much needed injection of capital although it remains to be seen whether this is to help finance the new £500 million stadium at Bramley Dock or is more significant in terms of a takeover with a price of £600 million being mooted. There will now be clarity, at least, as to which division Everton are in and that should expedite a deal – and certainly that has to be the hope because this cannot go on.

Quite how a club can spend so much money and find itself in this plight is almost unfathomable. They faced Bournemouth – who gave their players most of last week off and have lost their final four games after so impressively securing their own Premier League status – with no centre-forward, no-one wide on the right, both Dwight O’Neil and Alex Iwobi down the left, a change in formation, Coady back, and with a starting XI that had never been fielded before.

There is more to come. Staying in the league is just the beginning of it and, of course, it would actually have been easier for the Premier League executive had they gone down. The next battle is a big one – Everton have been charged with a breach of the league’s profit and sustainability rules, which used to be known as financial fair play, and if found guilty could face a points deduction.

How will Leicester City, Leeds United and even Southampton react? This remains unchartered territory, a potentially toxic can of worms. A watch this space.

And so, for Everton, it means even more uncertainty. Yet more fear and confusion. They remain in the Premier League, yes, but for how much longer unless there is a change of ownership, a new board and a new approach? It needs to be a seismic summer.

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