If the first 11 have presented a problem, the greater warning came on page 11. Page 11, that is, of Everton’s annual financial report. “Conditions indicate the existence of a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt about the group’s ability to continue as a going concern,” it read. Those conditions, in the curious way Everton phrased it, were “if the assumptions in the relegation scenario were not achieved”.
Their assumptions were that a storied club, founder members of the Football League and the club who have played more top-division games than any other in England, would stay up. With one game to go, they are one place above the relegation zone, their fate in their hands but dicing with disaster. A win against Bournemouth will keep Everton up. Anything else would doom them if Leicester win; lose and Leeds would leapfrog Everton with a victory of their own.
