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Marco Silva's final day in charge of Everton was bewildering and torturous in equal measure.

At around 7pm, 10 hours after he had arrived at Finch Farm to begin preparing for a game he strongly suspected he wouldn't be in charge of, the Portuguese coach was finally informed that he was being sacked .

He had looked a dead man walking at Anfield yet, somehow, it took until this evening, pushing 24 hours later, to officially bring his reign to an end.

Silva, already hurting and fearing the worst for weeks, would still be at the training ground, clearing out his office and saying his goodbyes, long after the club had issued a statement confirming he had been dismissed after 18 months in charge.

It felt as though he had been on borrowed time ever since the defeat to Norwich City and his agony would be prolonged into this evening.

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Majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri, who wanted to sleep on his next move after the 5-2 mauling to Liverpool and had been reluctant to sack Silva, caught a late morning train from London to Runcorn before driving to the club's training base in Halewood.

He arrived on Merseyside seemingly determined to, decisively, bring clarity to the managerial situation but, as the club's board of directors were summoned to Finch Farm, the sacking took far longer than anyone expected.

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Regrettably, Silva would not be afforded the dignity of a quick dismissal.

And after five hours of talks, including an address to the Blues' squad, Moshiri decided to wield the axe on Silva's Goodison reign and it is believed he was the one to deliver the news.

Silva's backroom staff were also still inside the training ground at this point, waiting to hear if they would need to bother coming back in tomorrow or not.

Moshiri and the board of directors were discussing their futures elsewhere. The end seemed near yet Silva and his team were made to wait to find out.

Belatedly, they were given an answer.

The manager's dismissal at Watford had been abrupt, brutal and said to be cold. His sacking from Everton today was a sad and sorry way for the situation to have been handled.

It is understood that those players Moshiri had stood in front of, after training, had left Finch Farm still believing their under-pressure manager would take tomorrow's sessions as normal but hours after they had driven out of the gates, it emerged that he had been sacked.

Tomorrow morning, Duncan Ferguson will take the final preparations ahead of the visit of Chelsea on Saturday lunchtime and the search for a permanent replacement for Silva will begin in earnest.

Everyone, including Everton's now former boss, expected that to have started hours ago.