EVEN the glaring Goodison sunshine couldn’t obscure the long, cold winter that lies ahead for troubled Everton.

A club whose fans, players, officials and manager are longing for a repeat of last season, on Saturday they got it – but only in the shape of Fernando Torres applying the finishing touches to another one-sided Merseyside derby.

But that’s as far as it’s going at the moment. The Carling Cup run is over before it began, finishing fifth seems a distant memory even at this early stage and unless vast improvement is booked on the flight to Belgium, the European adventures can be waved goodbye as well.

Even a dubious refereeing decision that led to an Everton red card in the Goodison derby can draw no parallels to last season’s chaos. On the day, Tim Cahill’s sending-off had absolutely no impact on the outcome and that says a lot about the competitive edge Everton are lacking at the moment.

Manager David Moyes reasoned: “That’s the difference £100m can make.” Fair enough.

But since when has a relative lack of resources ever stopped him and his players before? Against Liverpool of all teams?

The answer lies in the fact that all is not well. Everton supporters were of course depressed on Saturday night, but even defeat to their fierce city foes would be bearable if it they could look at the bigger picture without squeamishly thrusting their fingers in front of their eyes.

Rivalries aside, Liverpool merely became the latest team to come away from Goodison with three points this season, just as Blackburn and Portsmouth had in Everton’s two previous home league games.

And the one game on their own ground they didn’t lose could yet have the most catastrophic effect on the current campaign if Standard Liege this week close out the good work they put in to secure a 2-2 draw in the Uefa Cup first round first leg.

All a far cry from the heady days of 2007/08. No wonder the team picture of last season’s squad still adorns the walls of the main stand’s staircase.

But on derby weekend, it’s only apt to use Liverpool as the benchmark. After all, uneasy stand-offs between manager and hierarchy is their domain.

Now the smell of instability and uncertainty has wafted over Stanley Park – and it needs extinguishing quickly because the lingering doubts over Moyes’ contract situation, whether they are explicitly linked or not, are being mirrored on the field.

Rafael Benitez has been able to cope with his brushes with authority because of the odd sweetener to keep him onside. A spare £20m for Robbie Keane for example (which, by the way, looked money well spent when he somehow dug out that superb cross for Torres to open the scoring on Saturday).

His side is still unbeaten and he enjoyed another Saturday lunchtime at the top of the Premier League. Moyes cannot, however, sustain a similar level of personal security.

It’s not that Everton played that badly against Liverpool, and they could quite easily have been ahead in the first half if Tim Cahill had been as accurate with his lunge at the ball as he was at Xabi Alonso’s legs late on.

But with still more than half an hour to go when Torres volleyed in his first of the day, the players’ confidence and, more worryingly, belief that they could resurrect the situation visibly drained away. Indeed, they were lucky not be three down to a Torres hat-trick within seven minutes.

So at times like these even the smallest boost to morale can have the biggest impact. And the manager’s future being finally secured would surely have the sort of uplifting effect on the dressing room that is sorely needed to turn round this faltering opening to the season, which started with a painfully long wait for summer transfer activity and has only been eased by victories against sides who came up from the Championship.

Captain Phil Neville has previously stated that Everton losing Moyes would be “a disaster” for the club, and while that’s an exaggerated conclusion, you can appreciate how he came to it.

The Scot has never made any secret of his desire to secure longevity in his current role. In modern-day football terms, it’s six-and-a-half-year existence is already a lifetime, to the point where many share Neville’s feeling that the end of the Moyes era could be the end of many of their ambitions.

The real cause for concern is that contract talks have dragged on for a bafflingly long time now. Complicated negotiation are usually fine with the fans, because all they care about is that scribbling the name at the bottom of the piece of paper thing which tends to mean all is done and dusted.

Given that the pen seemed to be poised early in the summer, you can now understand the anxiety. The top was soon screwed firmly back on when Moyes decided the urgent business of player recruitment had to be his priority.

But the window shut on September 1. So to cut a month-long story short, Moyes had his offer, amended the terms and sent it back to the club – where it remains.

All of which just adds to the doubts that have been slowly creeping into the club since fifth place was secured back in May. Nobody could have foreseen such apparent disarray both on and off the pitch since – and it needs stamping out with some decisive action in both of those areas.

The smart money still has to be on Moyes extending his stay at Goodison, Kirkby or wherever – but the sooner the better if only to allay the fears of the supporters, which are ominously turning into sheer indifference given a European attendance of less than 30,000 and an even more alarming derby showing of fewer than 40,000.

And the effects of disharmony between board and boss can be a deadly clash. If Everton aren’t careful, they could soon be asking Joe Kinnear to dust down those caretaker overalls once again.

No offence to him personally, but as next week’s visitors Newcastle will be only too quick to testify, that’s the last thing anyone wants.

And it says everything that defeat to Liverpool is the least of Everton’s problems.