One big problem for Everton’s chances of staying up is that Lampard is absolutely fucking hopeless at coaching defence. His ideas and instincts are all wrong and he doesn’t have a sense of overall team balance. This is a manager who made Rudiger - now one of the most thought-after CBs in the world - look like a useless clown and placed him in the doghouse. Same with Christensen who looked a solid defender before and after being coached by Lampard, but a total liability during that stint. Even Kepa never looked nearly as bad in his career as he did under Lampard - noticing a pattern? His 2nd season at Chelsea set negative records for goals conceded despite that defensive line being protected by Kante, Kovacic and Jorginho - 3 of the very best DMs in the world.
Lampard is simply a serial destroyer of defenders; I really think he would even make Van Dijk look bad. He neglects that part of the game in order to implement his short-passing style combined with a high line, which does look pleasing on the eye and can at first scare some teams into retreating into defensive posture - but soon everyone figures out that the monster has a soft underbelly. Now Michael Keane - for all his shortcomings still Everton’s best defender - is the next one to be turned into a laughingstock by Lampard and even dropped despite them not having enough natural CBs to fill a back 3. With this kind of rudderless coaching being introduced in the crucial part of the season, Everton will need to get very lucky to avoid relegation.