sport news DOMINIC KING: There's no escape from the Everton vortex trends now
The phone call arrived, belatedly, at 3pm. Frank Lampard had known the writing was on the wall but, even still, it did not make it any easier to deal with the pain.
Farhad Moshiri had spoken to the 44-year-old a number of times since Saturday night, even asking him for his views on what was needed in terms of recruitment, but the final conversation between the pair ended with a parting of the ways.
A man with Lampard’s experience of football, from the clubs he has played for and managed, will have known that losing so many games so quickly had left him on a sticky wicket. The identity of the teams who had beaten Everton, rivals at the bottom, exacerbated the situation.
Frank Lampard was sacked by Everton on Monday after less than a year in charge of the club
Owner Farhad Moshiri (right) spoke to Lampard several times since Everton's 2-0 loss to West Ham on Saturday
Football, with its ruthlessness and relentless demands, is not an environment that generates sympathy but there was genuine empathy for Lampard within Goodison Park — few fans had called for him to go, the desire to see him succeed was obvious.
Lampard, though, is the latest man to find there is no way out of this vortex. A cycle of mismanagement, of bringing in players who aren’t of the right standard, has left Everton staring into the abyss and you genuinely fear for what is next.
If it is Marcelo Bielsa, he will have to be a miracle worker and not just the footballing genius that his devotees will tell you he is. Bielsa is a coach whose views and ideas have helped take the game into a new era, but can he keep Everton in the top flight?
Moshiri was at the game against West Ham after being told to stay away from Goodison Park last weekend
Marcelo Biela is top of the club's list of candidates to replace former midfielder Lampard
Effectively, he will have to transform a team and club that appear to have learnt no lessons from last season’s harrowing dice with relegation into European contenders. It might sound trite, but that really is what is required.
All coaches are only as good as the players with which they are dealing and this Everton squad, during the past seven years, have regularly strung together the kind of results that raise blood pressure and send managers to the exit door.
You might be startled by Lampard’s run of one win in 14 matches, stretching back to October, but Rafa Benitez had something similar last season (two
