Everton wretched run of recent form may have been given a brief reprieve with their dramatic win over Newcastle in midweek, but it was very much a return to the norm in the FA Cup quarter-final against Crystal Palace this afternoon.
Having actually played rather well in the opening 20 minutes or so, Frank Lampard's team would go on to put in a completely abject performance in the remainder of the contest as they shipped a heavy 4-0 defeat.
That scoreline could have been an even larger one despite the fact that the home side did not play particularly well. That will certainly come as a worry to Everton fans ahead of a potentially decisive few weeks ahead in their search for Premier League survival.
Frank Lampard gives damning assessment of Everton team
Speaking after the game, Frank Lampard gave a fairly damning summary of his team's performance, saying Crystal Palace did not even have to play well to rack up such a big scoreline.
It was never a game we should lose 4-0. I'm not defending us there, what I'm saying is we were food for 20 minutes and the better team. We weren't much worse for the rest of the game in terms of our play, it was off slightly.
Every time we concede our heads go down and we were a little bit worse. Did Palace have to be good to beat us? No.
I'm not disrespecting Palace, I've come here with Chelsea teams and seen Zaha give us problems, Eze give us our problems, Conor Gallagher has been one of the best players in the league this year. None of that happened today and we lost 4-0...
The dream of getting to Wembley and playing in a semi-final and final have gone. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest prize for us this was always can we stay in the Premier League. I counted a cup run in that, so that's the focus now...
It's huge (the task of staying in the Premier League). Some things I've seen there and in our last away game are intrinsic, they're in there. They're in the culture and they don't turn with a flick of the switch, they turn with a lot of hard work and character.
I'm certainly up for that. I believe the players are up for that, but they have to show that in games and they have to show reactions in games to do things better.
I keep saying it, we could have been much more comfortable today, as in we should have contested that game until the end. That's the way it should be. The way we handled bits within the game, without Palace playing particularly well, we handed them a free pass into the semi-final as far as I'm concerned.
Frank Lampard will now have the benefit of an international break to try and fix some of the faults within the side, although how successful he will be in doing so remains to be seen.
With a very tough run of fixtures to come, they will have to do so quickly if they are to avoid the drop in the months ahead.
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