It’s been a while, but, you know. That Coronation didn’t organise itself. Just saying.

Shit’s getting heavy now. We’re juggling with chainsaws. The merest slip and you’re getting nutmegged playing Subbuteo.

It’s a few hours before the Blues face Tony Stark’s Brighton at the Amex, and the realisation is that a Leicester win at Fulham, or Nottingham Forest beating Southampton, could more or less leave us needing snookers. 

And to top it off, there will be no Burnley, Blackpool or Wigan in the Championship next season. 

That’s a blow, as other than the amount of games against sides in the North West there was only one real consolation associated with relegation, and we’ll probably draw them Branch Davidian twats in both cups as well.

It’s crazy that the myopic greed and total inability to cooperate for the common good that is so endemic in football has resulted in the bottom three places in the Premier League becoming a footballing Chernobyl. Whereas other sports might see you presented with a wooden spoon for a disappointing season, the Barclays Squid Game gifts you an extinction level event. 

Farhad Moshiri sat at the table wearing a greasy headband with Christopher Walken, while the rotten-toothed representatives of the rest of league place raucous bets and laugh their sweaty heads off.

And they still have more shots than the Blues.

The reality is we’ve all been brought up with this sense of Everton exceptionalism – that it’s inconceivable, unholy, that the Toffees can go down. Almost like Brexit voters who genuinely expected to be allowed to swan around Europe unhindered, because we’re British and that’s just the way the world works. But now there is the prospect of a very rude awakening.

I’ve used this analogy before, but the railways have eventually come to the Wild West, and it’s spelling the end for the old gunslingers. Everyone has money now, so the ‘Mersey Millionaires’ don’t get to spend their way out of trouble. In fact, with Financial Fair Play, quite the opposite.

And it’s surely only Everton who can sit with their noses pressed against the window for so, so long, to then eventually get their fucking billionaire who in turn manages to go and spend too much money.

TOO MUCH!

The pressure to preserve Premier League status is crippling and it colours every stupid, well-intentioned decision that has led us to this last drink at the Shitehawk Saloon. The weight of that fear is so overwhelming it’s surprising that the Main Stand hasn’t twisted like the bulkhead of a stricken submarine. And to continue (labour) the nautical theme – if we may – where the Brightons and Brentfords have had the time and space to employ a naval engineer to design sleek new hulls for their sporting vessels, Everton and Leeds just buy bigger buckets to bail the water out with.

Eventually someone sinks.

If the worst does happen – and we’re still in with a chance of avoiding it – then everyone gets to deal with it in their own way. At the moment it feels very Francis Fukuyama – like the end of history – but really it’s just another phase in the journey.

Burnley, for instance, were meant to be melted down and sold for scrap when them and their clueless American owners got relegated with all sorts of onerous loan repayments hanging over them. 

However, they instead appointed a great young coach, enjoyed an amazing season playing sensational football and stormed – yes stormed! – straight back up as well-hung rockstar champions. 

It’s sport. There are ups and downs. Suck it up, buttercup.

There’s no overarching point to this. Relegation will feel horrendous, and we still might not get relegated. But it won’t be the end. It will just be different.

Because in the words of Logan Roy: ’Nothing is a line. Everything, everywhere, is always moving forever. Get used to it.’

But it will perhaps be more fitting to instead finish with Roman Roy and a message to the team down on the South Coast.

‘Go hard. Go fast. Go, you lovely bastards.’