Lampard spent a year at Goodison Park as manager and helped save the club from relegation, but failed to kick on in the following season and was sacked and replaced by Sean Dyche at the end of a barren January transfer window.

And while appearing on the “Stick to Football” podcast (24 January), Lampard shared that the Toffees had a plan heading into the summer that was curtailed by senior players refusing to leave due to their long contracts at the club.

“Obviously when Richarlison left the club, we all knew it was coming because it had to happen,” he said. “So he left the club and it gave us a bit of wiggle room to bring players in.

“My view was at the back end of the season that we’d stayed up but the squad needed a lot of work. And it wasn’t just the idea of bringing players in, it was the idea of getting players to move on.

“Some of those players were probably at an age in their career where they’d signed long contracts and weren’t going to go anywhere. The practical nature of any football club is sometimes you’re then a little bit hamstrung by that.

“As I say, at that point intentions were great at trying to bring players in. But the reality is we were never really going to do it.

“I wasn’t privvy to them [talks with Premier League], I would only get feedback from it. I think they were amicable to a point but there clear lines about what you could do at that stage.”

Shocking

In the expectation that the team would be able to handle it, many Everton supporters looked at the scenario at the time and suggested that it might happen.

However, it now appears that they were unable to handle it because a player under contract cannot be compelled to leave without it triggering more serious problems.

The main question, though, has to be who gave the club permission to offer those players such large, extended contracts at that particular time, knowing full well that they were at a particular phase of their careers.

And why did they then choose Lampard as manager if he believed that those players couldn’t play the way he wanted to if they knew it would be difficult to transfer them on?

All of this may sound like justifications, but it’s really just more proof that the previous board ran the team into the ground and left it in utter disarray.