What is a manager to do? Two weeks ago, Everton's Howard Kendall sent out 11 good men, true and blue, to contest the season's first Merseyside derby. In the space of 90 absorbing and memorable minutes, logic was turned squarely on its head; Liverpool were mauled, Everton were seemingly reborn.
Kendall ushered those self-same players out at Goodison Park again yesterday and to suggest they let him down would be to understate things. Southampton had lost all five of their previous league fixtures away from The Dell and yet they won a rather listless game with much to spare. Kendall's boys left the field to a chorus of jeers and catcalls and they richly deserved each and every insult which cascaded down from the stands to accompany them as they marched, heads bowed, towards the sanctuary of the dressing room.
This was dreadful stuff and the fight to avoid relegation is once again in full flow. The sad thing is that even in the dark days of wildly fluctuating fortunes there is, at times, something eminently watchable about their football, particularly when their opponents have a similarly debilitating level of uncertainty.
Since the disintegration of their famous side of the mid-Eighties, Everton's problem has been one of inconsistency, that and a chronic inability to embrace the notion that a club's God-given right to succeed against the sport's less celebrated makeweights was removed from the statute book around the time the Titanic went down.
Put Everton up against a Liverpool or an Arsenal and they will prosper. Put them up against a Southampton on a miserable, uninviting November afternoon and all the old frailties will bubble to the surface, poisoning their football to such an extent that any better moments of inspiration are lost. Yesterday, too much of their play in midfield was undermined, and then wrecked, by a timidity which always threatened to be their undoing.
It took Southampton longer than was actually necessary to arrive at the conclusion that here, most definitely, was a team for the taking. But, once an initial sense of surprise had been overcome and tactics had been modified accordingly, Southampton crawled from beneath their stone and began to lacerate an Everton defence weakened, predictably so, by the absence of the unwell Slaven Bilic.
Southampton moved forwards often and effortlessly; it was underlining what was an obvious supremacy which they found so difficult. Patience was to bring its reward, however, after 24 minutes the Everton's flimsy resistance was finally broken. And the manner of this breakthrough? Why, the head of Matt le Tissier of course - the least feared, the least effective weapon, in the Saints' armoury.
Actually, it was a quite beautifully fashioned and marvellously executed goal, a lush oasis in the heart of an arid desert. Having been picked out by Carlton Palmer's marvellous pass, David Hirst clipped the ball across to le Tissier who scored despite the presence of five Everton defenders.
Duncan Ferguson struck the face of the crossbar with a fine header as half-time beckoned but, that was just about all Everton could muster.
Neville Southall saved majestically from Ken Monkou but he was doing no more than delaying the inevitable because a second, decisive Southampton goal always seemed likely. It came on 54 minutes and what a beauty it was, Kevin Davies collecting the ball and simply running and running until the Everton defence split like a rotten peach.
His low shot rolled just inside Southall's left hand post to ensure that Southampton moved out of the relegation places for the first time all season.
A bitterly disappointed Kendall said: "The crowd reaction at the end was understandable. They came expecting a good performance and a good result but they didn't get either.
