You could have strapped David Moyes in a straitjacket, locked him in a wooden crate and tossed him in the River Thames behind Craven Cottage. But it would have been a waste of time.
You would only have been liable to see a soggy Scotsman wringing out his West Ham tracksuit not long later because, like it or not, Moyes has turned into football’s Harry Houdini this season.
However dire the situation seems, Moyes escapes unshackled and unharmed. First there was Everton — or ‘El Sackico’ as this newspaper coined it — and a 2-0 win.