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“I don't know what Everton fans want.”

It's a regular refrain from TV pundits and analysts – usually from those who don't watch Everton regularly - and BT commentator Glenn Hoddle was simply the latest.

So here's a few sensible suggestions, Glenn.

Entertainment.

Ambition.

Aspiration.

Or how about home matches which make the £30 price of a match ticket seem like a decent alternative to wandering around the local garden centre on a Saturday afternoon?

Because that's what Blues fans have been enduring for far too long.

Everton have been safe from the once possible prospect of a relegation fight for some considerable time.

But manager Sam Allardyce has refused to remove the shackles from his side.

The Blues boss has clung to Everton's solid home record like a drowning man clinging to a rubber duck.

And Tom Davies' added time equaliser ensured Everton remained unbeaten again, but it was another tough, tough watch.

Everton's last 10 home games have produced the following half-time scores 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-3, 0-0, 0-0, 2-0, 0-1, 0-0, 0-0. Allardyce has only been in charge for 12.

Club legend Neville Southall, never shy of an opinion, tweeted during the end of this latest dirge: “If I had three minutes to live I would watch a dvd of Everton playing this season. It would seem like I had a lifetime left.”

How much time Sam Allardyce has left is an issue which has to be addressed by the club's hierarchy as a matter of urgency.

Because by the time the players returned to the pitch for the traditional end of season lap of appreciation, Goodison Park was a largely deserted arena – barely a quarter full.

(Image: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Apathy is an even more worrying reaction from supporters than frustrated anger, and there were plenty of examples of that too.

Players, partners and children all paraded around the pitch. But there was notably no sign of the manager or his coaching staff.

There weren't many fans either.

BT presenter Jake Humphreys had suggested to his baffled studio guest that “they want attractive, attacking football,” to which the one-time England manager retorted: “So did Stoke and West Brom.”

With respect to a once elegant footballer, Everton and the two Midlands clubs haven't been in the same orbits since Alan Hudson and Bryan Robson were pulling midfield strings in the Potteries and the Black Country.

And even then Evertonian expectations were significantly greater.

They still are. In the stands at least.

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A traumatic first half to this horrible season has been replaced by a grim grind of a second.

Everton have won nine of their last 11 farewell appearances of the season at Goodison.

But this latest was simply typical of so many games which have gone before this season.

Following a truly sedentary first 45 minutes in which the most animated the Goodison crowd became was when a truly epic fist fight broke out in the Main Stand, boos accompanied the half-time whistle.

Maybe it was coincidental, but the half-time airing of Forever Everton over the Goodison tannoy was guillotined immediately after the words “Everton's the team that plays beautiful football.”

It was apt because they hadn't.

Everton were turgid and overly-cautious.

In the 41st minute Idrissa Gana Gueye produced a tidy tackle and turn on the left edge of his own penalty area and sprinted into space ahead of him. In the yards and yards of space in front of him there was just one single blue shirt to aim at, the willing but isolated Cenk Tosun.

Allardyce tried to change things around.

But the switches made in the game only worked in Southampton's favour.

Ramiro Funes Mori came on for the frankly dreadful Yannick Bolasie as Allardyce switched formations to go three at the back.

But that only gave Cedric Soares space to exploit in Everton's left-back position and his 56th minute cross was butted past the exposed Jordan Pickford.

When Allardyce stepped from the dug-out and stood pitchside to make further tweaks, the boos from the home fans which had greeted the goal intensified.

Oumar Niasse's introduction added energy and unpredictability, if not class, while Davy Klaassen was introduced for four minutes longer than he enjoyed in his only other Goodison appearance this year against Brighton.

(Image: Tony McArdle/Everton FC via Getty Images)

But the only discernible reaction was chants from both ends of the pitch for Sam Allardyce to, well, let's politely paraphrase, exit the club rapidly.

Those chants were unprecedented in my 43 years of watching football at Goodison Park.

Everton fans have audibly called for a chairman to quit the club in that time and many, many players to never darken Goodison's doorstep again.

But not managers. Even the hapless Mike Walker didn't endure that ignominy.

Sam Allardyce is a first.

It was clear at the end what a significant chunk of Everton fans want.

Whether they get it will be determined by Farhad Moshiri, who was present to witness the dispiriting affair.

This should be a significant summer ahead.