Efan Ekoku put the dampner on Everton’s spirits after the Merseyside derby triumph over Liverpool a week earlier. The Manchester-born striker struck four times in half an hour, either side of the break to cut short Everton’s joy of taking a 14th-minute lead through Paul Rideout.

And when Chris Sutton added a fifth for Norwich 13 minutes from time it summed up a day of drastically fluctuation fortunes at Everton. The season of inconsistencies continued for Howard Kendall’s men who suffered one of their heaviest defeats at home in years.