AN injury-time equaliser normally prompts wild celebrations but the Goodison crowd simply expressed relief, followed by anger, at the final whistle in the wake of Marouane Fellaini’s late strike on Saturday afternoon.

In short, no-one was fooled by what they had seen. Everton were terrible against a rock-bottom West Ham, a club riven with off-the-field problems and whose previous away encounter was a 5-0 thrashing up at Newcastle.

It’s the same old story, with one of the division’s weakest teams – the sort who in recent, more successful seasons we have made short work of – making us appear completely clueless for long spells of the game.

Jermaine Beckford and Victor Anichebe looked like a Championship front pairing, while the central midfield combination of Fellaini and Mikel Arteta again proved totally unconvincing.

It was only when the bushy haired Belgian was pushed up front and Leon Osman’s purgatory on the left wing ended that the Blues started to exert any real pressure.

With David Moyes talking afterwards about looking for a new formation and perhaps rewarding Diniyar Bilyaletdinov’s goalscoring cameo with some more time in the team, it shouldn’t come as any great surprise if the line-up that ended the game against West Ham is the one that starts against Chelsea in the FA Cup, with Fellaini deployed in what we all now think of as the ‘Tim Cahill’ role.

Tinkering with the formation is really the only option open to Moyes, it seems, as the signals coming out of the club regarding incoming transfers seem less than positive.

At best, the money raised from selling Steven Pienaar is all the Blues manager has to work with, and that really isn’t going to stretch too far.

After all, there are always plenty of clubs desperate to strengthen in January, and this time around they all face the problem of Sunderland, flush with their Darren Bent money, potentially snapping up any decent players who come available at the more affordable end of the market.

The chances of us bringing in anyone significant then seems about as likely as Andy Gray quoting from The Female Eunuch in his next match commentary. Whenever that is.

Which leaves us where exactly? Sweating on Saturday’s game, most probably, when the gate will almost certainly reflect the current mood.

Dip out of the FA Cup at this stage and what’s really left of this season, other than a potential relegation battle?