Come on, come on, get down to Goodison Park.

Woo.

And so the day of judgement is nearly upon us, when we find out just which sliding doors moment is going to be the one that defines this most gruesome of seasons. 

Which version of the Toffeeverse will we inhabit next season and beyond?

Will we always look back on Antony Gordon’s limp-legged challenge at the end of the Southampton game? Or Michael Keane’s foot like a traction engine past Hugo Lloris?

The Belgian Jack Rodwell failing to bundle over that weird end-of-level boss in a Sega beat-em-up Adama Traore at Molyneux, perhaps? Or Jordan Pickford’s penalty save from James Maddison, who it turns out isn’t actually Zinedine Zidane after all? 

All will become clear.

Everton obviously have the advantage over the two other contenders – we match the best that they do and we stay up. Just win, at home to Bournemouth, and the rest can kiss our curvy butts.

At this point it’s customary to play the This Is Not Football ‘crying it in’ anthem. Perhaps Nino Rota’s love theme from Romeo and Juliet. 

That’s better, because the wildcard here is Everton’s injury situation. 

The fullbacks have been a constant conundrum all season, and even worse, the non-scoring centre-forward we’ve pinned all our hopes on appears to be re-goosed. 

The fact that Dominic Calvert-Lewin has been pretty goal-shy apart from that wild half a season behind closed doors does him something of a disservice, especially given most of the teams he’s played in. That is, crap ones who defend most of the time and who tend to lack decent chance creators. Opportunity enablers. Assist executives.

For this final game of the season then, with fuck-knows-who at fullback and Goodison pissing down its own leg and screaming ‘bite their fucking noses off!’, cool-headed creativity is likely to be at an absolute premium. So having a big lad who can chase and fight for bingo balls from the back, dropping out of the sky like Biblical pestilence, would come in right handy. 

Instead.

‘Right then Neil, go and make a name for yourself lad.’

Except Sean Dyche almost certainly calls him ‘Mopes’.

Even if we do survive, we don’t even get to breathe an absolute sigh of relief, because there’s then the whole drama around the alleged breach of Financial Fair Play regulations. And yes, it’s quite clear that the ‘fair play’ bit there is doing a lot of heavy lifting. 

If we are found guilty of breaching the rules once (despite apparently working with the Premier League to ensure we comply), and Manchester City are bang to rights for even, say, half of the 115 charges being levelled against them, would that in fact make them a way worse run club than Everton?

Because The Citizens do appear to have a healthy disregard for ‘the man’ there like, don’t they? Makes you wonder where else have they decided to just dance to their own tune. 

‘Hang on, do you remember when they played us and you said it looked like they have got 13 players on the pitch…’

And then, and then, and then we will have all the takeover shite to fill our summer too. 

Can we just call it now on this front? Whether it’s MSP Sports Capital, 777 Sports Investment Group, or the owners of the Tallahassee Trucknuts, they will put some fella on the board and internet experts will give it the big ‘I’ve been speaking to some people over here. Can’t really say who. Heard good things about this guy though. Should shake things up.’

In 10 months they will be known as ‘these fucking septics.’

So blow me, fuckface.

Hang on, before you do, the blog used to automatically send updates to Twitter, but that’s not a thing any more. And because I can’t get access to the old account – because I deliberately fucked it off for the same reason anyone who values their sanity does – there’s a new one where the admittedly very occasional updates will get posted.

@thisisnotfootba

That’s not being all Irvine Welsh, there’s a character limit on the names.

Look for our flag on Sunday as well: 

NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE