Everton are managerless, hopeless and directionless but somehow worth 500m?

Everton are up for sale. Or maybe they’re not. Their players are up for sale. Or maybe they’re not. It’s the season of mixed messaging at Goodison Park.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

Mentioning bankruptcy in relation to Everton in their current state might feel like tempting fate, but Ernest Hemingway’s well-known quotation from The Sun Also Rises speaks to more than just financial penury. It seems to be wrapped into the human condition that we don’t notice the little cracks that pool together to cause our worlds to come crashing down around our ears until it’s too late, with only the benefit of hindsight offering the clarity to show us what should have been obvious all along.

As recently as Saturday afternoon at West Ham United, it felt as though Everton’s biggest problem was the feeling of inertia that has settled over the club this season. The team wasn’t improving. The manager didn’t seem to be making much of a difference. Farhad Moshiri and chairman Bill Kenwright sat in the stands, looking for all the world like Statler and Waldorf come to life, surveying the wreckage with blank expressions on their faces.