Everton’s concerns are concentrated near the bottom of the table but the situation at the top elsewhere unwittingly adds to the problem for Marco Silva. There they sit, unbeaten, unified and the envy of clubs who have spent much more in their pursuit of glory. Famalicão’s rise to the summit in Portugal is simply rubbing it in for the floundering Everton manager.

Famalicão, stadium capacity just over 5,000, currently lord it over Benfica, Porto and Sporting thanks to the successful impact of their new manager, João Pedro Sousa, Silva’s long-time assistant until he accepted an offer to return home and take charge of the promoted club this summer.

Sousa had worked alongside Silva for the best part of seven years at five clubs. He was the man the Everton manager leaned on last season to help rectify a dreadful run and the team’s consistent inability to defend at set pieces.

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Under-achievement and set-piece failings are back again this season and in the absence of his trusted sounding board Silva has shown no sign of engineering a solution alongside Sousa’s replacement, Luís Boa Morte. Yet another Everton manager is shuffling towards the precipice.

It is not a media construct to label West Ham’s visit to Goodison Park on Saturday a monumental afternoon for Silva’s Everton career. He said so himself following the dismal defeat at Burnley last Saturday when, having lost a fourth consecutive Premier League game – to the fifth set-piece goal conceded this season, more than any other team in the top flight – he described the next game as a must-win several times.

Silva also accepted the rising pressure is justified and so, too, the undisguised anger of the Everton fans he stopped to applaud after the game. At least the 42-year-old had the decency to acknowledge their presence. Most of the players headed straight down the tunnel, symbolising the lack of fight and responsibility that contributed to an anaemic performance at Turf Moor and many other stadiums besides.

Once again, and it as has become the damaging norm since Farhad Moshiri’s arrival as owner in February 2016, the season is already about managerial survival or upheaval and not the progression the club craves from an expensively assembled team under a young, positive coach.

Three weeks ago, Silva claimed a sense of crisis was easy to manufacture around Everton given the money spent under Moshiri – around £450m, the fourth-biggest outlay in the Premier League over the past five years. But the crisis is now real and largely of Silva’s making.

He was set the objective of European qualification this season by the club’s hierarchy following another summer of heavy spending. Third from bottom after eight games, only one against a team who finished in the top six last season and two against promoted sides, has made that an optimistic target by early October.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Everton lost their fourth consecutive league game last week at Burnley. Photograph: Tony McArdle - Everton FC/Everton FC via Getty Images

Around £117m worth of talent was acquired in the summer with £84m recouped in sales, although it was not an entirely successful window with Idrissa Gueye departing for Paris Saint-Germain, Kurt Zouma staying at Chelsea and overpaid deadwood left clinging to the club’s books. Oumar Niasse, for example, remains an employee of a club in desperate need of a goalscorer.

Silva expected Chelsea to sell Zouma, who enjoyed a successful loan at Everton last season, despite them being under a transfer embargo. Silva accepted they would not far too late, although in fairness to Yerry Mina, who has taken the France international’s place, the Colombia defender has been one of Everton’s stronger performers this season.

Gylfi Sigurdsson and Richarlison, by contrast, have been passengers for the most part, with Silva appearing to have a blind spot over both. Injuries to André Gomes and Jean-Philippe Gbamin have created an added problem. The two summer signings were expected to form the first-choice partnership in central midfield. In their absence Silva has turned to the more defensive pairing of Fabian Delph and Morgan Schneiderlin and Everton’s frontline has been isolated as a consequence.

The decision to speculate on young promise at the expense of an experienced striker lies at the root of a toothless start. Moise Kean has yet to score since his £29m arrival from Juventus and at 19 years of age was always going to need time to adapt. Dominic Calvert-Lewin gives everything for the team except a consistent goal threat and the only out-and-out striker with experience, Cenk Tosun, is considered unsuitable by Silva to his pressing style. But that is enough of the mitigating circumstances.

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Everton’s starting lineup at Burnley cost more than £250m. It was pedestrian, it never opened up the defence all afternoon, it succumbed to a set-piece goal and the commitment and spirit that should be the bare minimum from a team with Everton’s ambition was nonexistent.

None of it came as a surprise to supporters who feel like extras in Groundhog Day. Silva’s 4-2-3-1 formation, his decision to replace Calvert-Lewin with Kean when behind, rather than play the two together, and Everton’s failure to retrieve a deficit, something they have managed twice in the Premier League under a manager who does not inspire, added to the predictable nature of defeat.

Everton’s board have shown little appetite to use the international break as a time for another managerial change but West Ham, and the Carabao Cup fourth-round tie at home to Watford, will test that resolve. Silva needs to instigate change before his employers do it for him.