Premier League have given Everton seven days to transform season after latest decision

Loyal but long-suffering Evertonians have been enduring a living nightmare for over two years now but for once those running football in this country have spared us all the ‘Hell on Earth’ scenario of a Merseyside Derby being played in the final week of this of all seasons.

If Everton had been forced to face Liverpool in the midweek slot ahead of the last Premier League fixtures of 2023/24 then – given where the two clubs currently find themselves in the table – there would have been a very realistic prospect that the Blues could have been playing their neighbours for top flight survival and the Reds for the title.

Perhaps that’s a dream plot for Sky Sports executives and the kind of neutrals who like to indulge in voyeuristic, car crash television. But in truth there was scope for just as much carnage and just as little genuine romance as such abominations if the most highly-strung derby in English football had been allowed to go ahead so late into this campaign.

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The Premier League seem to love a bit of jeopardy though – hopefully not ‘double jeopardy’ in Everton’s case – so there has to be relief all-round that a fixture which always has so much riding on it anyway, wasn’t amplified in its intensity even further by potentially ending up deciding whether the Blues go into their last-ever season at Goodison Park on the back of a first relegation in 73 years or saving themselves to deny Jurgen Klopp another Premier League crown on his departure.

The German, who left many a sentimental Kopite wiping their eyes back in January when he announced that he was