If you want to beat Chelsea, persuade one of the TV channels to shift the match to the earliest possible slot.

For some reason, the Blues cannot get their act together before mid-afternoon… especially if they’re playing away.

So it was at rudderless Goodison Park, where an Everton team staring at relegation and with Duncan Ferguson in temporary (but, who knows, possibly permanent) charge easily brushed aside a sleepy Chelsea who never really got out of bed, never mind out of first gear.

The damage was done in the first five minutes as a seemingly settled Chelsea side, with Tammy Abraham and Mason Mount working together up front, capitulated as Richarlison headed home for 1-0, meaning that Kepa has not kept a single away clean sheet in this calendar year… a dreadful stat for the most expensive goalkeeper.

With Alex Iwobi hassling Reece James (celebrating his 20th birthday this weekend) down Chelsea’s right, and every Toffee making life difficult for the Blues at every turn, Dominic Calvert-Lewin capitalised on a muddle between Andreas Christensen and Kurt Zouma in the Chelsea defence to make it 2-0 shortly after the break.

Although Mateo Kovacic scored from range in the 52nd minute to bring brief hope, this battle between Big Dunc and Medium-Sized Lamps ended when Calvert-Lewin slid in a messy third goal for Everton with six minutes remaining.

“It’s not good enough from us,” said Lampard, without offering any real theory as to why the wheels seem to have come off in recent weeks. “We didn’t do enough; we were trying to walk it in at times; we’d get in the box, but just didn’t get the shots away.”

Chelsea were muscled out of this game… too often ending up sitting on the pitch complaining about being pushed, instead of getting up, flying at their opponents and taking the game by the scruff of the neck.

Big Dunc was left hugging any ballboy he could find, while Chelsea meekly walked off the pitch like naughty puppy dogs who know they’ve done wrong, but can’t quite work out why.

At this rate, Jose Mourinho’s Spurs and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer’s Man United will be confident of catching the Blues by January… while Lampard will now do his best to persuade Chelsea’s transfer target department to get to work.