The nine-minute meltdown which plunged Everton deep into crisis

If nothing else, Everton contrived to make the worst start in their history even worse. They found a different way of losing, even as Sean Dyche maintained the wrong sort of 100 per cent record. They have played six Premier League games in August under him, losing each. Dycheball is apparently not a summer sport – he began with a 12.5 per cent win rate in the top flight in the month; and after an extraordinary Bournemouth comeback, it was lower still.

And if Everton spent 86 minutes making a case that they were not the season’s first crisis club, the subsequent meltdown suggested otherwise. There were three Bournemouth goals in nine minutes, and there could have been three more. Everton had conceded three to Brighton, four to Tottenham, but this time the defensive deficiencies came after leading. When Brighton won at Goodison Park, it was deserted by the end. When Bournemouth did, the Evertonian public were packed in because, little earlier, they had been raucous when Everton were rampant. And then suddenly Everton were ragged and they were wracked with nerves.

Which may be how they spend their season. Given Everton’s summer has seen two takeovers fall through, with the club’s future mired in uncertainty and pessimism part of the psyche, any more time spent chained to the foot of the table could be particularly damaging. So, too, any repeat of the kind of self-destructive streak they showed here.

For Dyche, a man who takes particular pleasure in being proved right, an afternoon that was seeming to offer vindication in abundance then acquired a chastening look. Dyche fashioned Everton’s lead but Andoni Iraola was the creator of a comeback while his Everton counterpart was too slow to react.

The Basque was proactive. First he made a triple substitution, then a double change. It transformed Bournemouth’s fortunes. Their first two goals were made by a substitute and scored by a starter. Antoine Semenyo converted Dango Ouattara’s magnificently menacing cross. Then Luis Sinisterra turned provider and Lewis Cook scored the kind of goal he is not expected to: charging into the box, planting a towering header into the net. The winner,…