GRIM NIGHT ON WAY BACK FROM SOUTH COAST A WORLD AWAY AS EVERTON LOOK TO FUTURE

It is 11.38pm. I have been driving for a couple of hours. It will be another three before I am home. It is snowing. In the car park at Warwick Services, I am the first to leave my footprints.

- Joe Thomas

That was the lowest point of the season. It was cold, I was tired and the M40, a pristine track of glowing white that was starting to freeze, would hold some nervy moments.

The demons that really tormented were not on the road, however. They lay 140-odd miles away at Bournemouth.

It was January 4 and Everton had started a new year in a familiar fashion with another limp defeat at the Vitality Stadium. Not even a shot on target this time.

Looking back, that was the night the season changed.

I led the way when Sean Dyche emerged for the post-match press conference.

They can be tough after displays like that, whoever the manager is.

But why always Bournemouth?

It was in the bowels of that same stadium some two years earlier that I asked Frank Lampard over his future for the first time.

Dyche was sometimes combative, sometimes defensive, always looking to gain the upper hand. But he seemed different that evening.

A few days later he would tell new Everton owners The Friedkin Group (TFG) he had taken the club as far as he could go.

That much was clear in his eyes and words as he looked down to me from his raised platform after the defeat that left the Blues staring down the barrel of a fourth consecutive relegation fight.