So here we are again.

The royal blue boa constrictor is slowly, inexorably crushing the life out of everyone who has even a passing affection for the club.

Farhad Moshiri’s peevish statements this week are emblematic of the sort of malaise that turns what should really be an expensive hobby into something all-consuming and just not fun.

It seems like the nub of the problem with the irrational Iranian is that he doesn’t know what he stands for. He has no gut instinct to fall back on. So he seeks out a consensus, a mood, and panders to that. And when whatever amorphous voice he listened to doesn’t provide him with an adequate solution, and then has the temerity to subsequently question his decision-making, he’s incandescent with the perceived hypocrisy.

Someone should have told him early on that in modern football you can’t please any of the people any of the time.

Against that bleak background then, there’s no overstating how important Saturday’s game at Goodison is. 

It has the potential to be epochal.

Southampton’s manager Nathan Jones will be telling his team to just keep hold of the ball in the early stages. Play in safe areas, Roberto Martinez style, take no risks and let the initial Everton fervour die down. Then as the tempo steadies, and the home players haven’t had much of the ball, wait for that ripple from the crowd. 

It’s not your first rodeo.

Fingers will be pointed, banners unfurled, and suggestions for corporate restructuring suggested loudly.

Is it churlish to suggest though that there are perhaps no real villains in this piece?

That it’s sport and sometimes some teams are no good?

And that some well-intentioned decisions have been poor and expensive, and the efforts at making amends have only compounded those misjudgements down the years?

Or does any movement need to offer simple answers to complex and nuanced problems to stand any chance of gaining traction? 

After all, the thought of doing nothing, while Everton face relegation, seems unthinkable. So action is required – but what? A massive banner saying ‘KICK IT IN THE GOALS!’ doesn’t seem to cut it.

Taking the Richard Nixon maxim that ‘people vote against things, not for them’ then, attention turns to the old perennial, Bill Kenwright, or maybe Denise Barret-Baxendale. Perhaps Kevin Thelwell. 

Pick your demon. 

Because the alternative, that we might in fact be helpless bystanders, at the mercy of the ability of some footballers, is simply too much to bear.  

Sleep tight. 

Up the Toffees.