So, after a truly terrible and agonising campaign that looked very likely to end in relegation, Everton finally managed to guarantee Premier League football at Goodison Park next season with that incredible 3-2 win over Crystal Palace last Thursday.
That dramatic and almost unbelievable result has given Everton supporters a chance to finally relax and enjoy their summer, even if the team signed off the season with their usual final day collapse!
But of course, for me and I’m sure for many, if not most Blues’ fans, the overiding emotion is of relief after what has been this club’s worst season in recent history.
The prospect of relegation this time round was an even more frightening one than on those two final day escapes in the 1990s because the stakes are so much higher now.
Had the Toffees’ fallen through the trap door this season I doubt the club would have ever recovered on or off the pitch, and it’s even remotely possible that the financial consequences could have led to adminstration.
Well, that nightmare scenario has been avoided, at least for another year.
And that is the point, because obviously unless major improvement is seen next season I fear we will be back in a similar position twelve months from now.
As I have previously written there was a real danger this football club could end up copying what had happened to Newcastle United a few years ago.
They, like Everton, were arguably a ‘big’ club with a fine tradition in the game, now owned by a wealthy individual who seemed to have little clear strategy or any real clue as to what he needed to do to bring success on the pitch.
And, it led to relegation for them several times, something that looked very possible again for the Magpies this season until the Saudi-backed takeover of that club.
The Blues’ themselves can’t afford to keep on flirting with the drop as they will eventually run out of luck and repeat Newcastle’s fate. And, as I mentioned above that would be very possibly terminal for Everton given all their financial problems.
The maanger will have seen plenty of evidence of how much work there is to do to improve this team. So, what should be the club’s and manager Frank Lampard’s main priorities for the summer to make sure of avoiding a repeat of this season?