Click here to read the previous episode

I like to get to work early. I think it sets the right tone. The boss should always be the first in. I nod politely at the security guard on the gate, I make myself a cup of coffee, I pad quietly down the thick blue carpet towards my office and I open the door.

“This should have been Ronald’s office,” says a voice in the gloom.

“Jesus Christ!” I shout, nearly dropping my coffee. “What are you doing in here, Erwin?”

“My brother and I could have done something here, I think,” he says mournfully. “Working together, as we have done so many times in the past, I really believe we could have turned this club around.”

“Could I have my desk back, please?” I ask him.

He frowns at me.

“It should have been Ronald’s desk,” he says. “And I could have had that little one over there. And we would have been together. And perhaps we could have come seventh before a catastrophic summer of poorly thought out transfers left us with a completely unbalanced team and we were sacked before Halloween.”

“Erwin,” I say firmly. “My desk.”

He sighs and gets out of my chair. He walks slowly to the door.

“It would have been beautiful,” he says as he leaves. “For a short time anyway.”

I don’t know what’s wrong with the man. It’s pretty beautiful here right now. We’ve got points on the board, we’re at the right end of the table and somehow we’ve turned Oumar Niasse into Pele.

And we’ll need him against West Ham because they’ve made a really good start. They beat Manchester City, they beat Tottenham (though everyone seems to be doing that this season) and with Dimitri Payet and Andy Carroll, they have multiple ways of getting at you. But they are tired after a midweek trip to Cyprus in the Europa Cup.

We’re not in Europe, so we have no such problems. Ramiro Funes Mori is suspended, it will be a cold day in hell before I pick Ashley Williams again, so Phil Jagielka returns to shuffle around meaningfully at the back.

West Ham are sluggish, but they have an excuse. We do not. We are sleep-walking through the game, giving the ball away constantly and offering no threat greater than the occasional long shot into the stands. We take the lead just before the break when Gerard Deulofeu’s free kick catches a wicked deflection and sends Adrian the wrong way. We don’t deserve it and I tell the players as much at the break, which leads to lots of sighing and eye-rolling from Erwin.

But it works. Ross Barkley smashes home another long range effort to make it 2-0 and then, would you believe it, Oumar bloody Niasse offers up a goal of the season contender from miles out.

West Ham are done, their players are exhausted and they go into damage limitation. We haven’t been particularly good. But we have three more points

Another international break gives me the opportunity to start plotting my winter transfer business, assuming that this doesn’t all go completely wrong and I get sacked before the Christmas decorations come down.

Jagielka’s contract expires at the end of the season and there isn’t going to be another one. Ashley Williams isn’t long for this club either. I’m going to put a name tag on a ribbon, tie it round his wrist and leave him on someone’s doorstep.

For reasons I cannot begin to understand, the club allowed Brendan Galloway to go out on loan to West Bromwich Albion where he’s played four games and impressed in all of them. I could really do with him back here. In the meantime, I’m keeping a close eye on Terence Kongolo, who’s playing well for Feyenoord, Presnal Kimpembe, who can’t get in the PSG team and Celtic’s Jozo Simunovic.

Williams must get wind of all of this scouting and he knocks on my door to ask why he isn’t getting in the first team. Resisting the urge to scream, “BECAUSE OF WATFORD!” in his face, I play the long game. There are still three months until the transfer window opens and I might need him in an emergency. I tell him that Funes Mori is in the form of his life and can’t be dropped. Astonishingly, he accepts my lie and I spend the rest of the day feeling bad about it.

When the players return, it’s clear that there’s some fatigue in the ranks. But we’ve won three on the spin so the only change is the return of the now apparently undroppable Funes Mori.

Southampton start better than us and Dusan Tadic rattles our crossbar after just a couple of minutes. We can’t really get our game going, but then Ross Barkley picks out Deulofeu on the right, he meep-meeps down the line and slides a low cross into the six yard box. I scream at Niasse to make the run but he appears to go into standby mode. Mercifully, James McClean hears me and skids in at the far post to open the scoring. Unfortunately he strains something doing it and has to be replaced by Yannick Bolasie, who hates my face.

The goal doesn’t really affect the balance of play, Southampton still seem to be the better team and we struggle to create anything of note. “Demi-God” Vida is a colossus at the back and makes two goal-saving blocks in quick succession before a refereeing aberration allows us to double our advantage. Idrissa Gueye clips a ball into the box for an obviously offside Niasse to tuck away and I don’t even celebrate because it’s so very clearly offside. But there’s no flag.

We shouldn’t even be 1-0 up, let alone 2-0 up but it doesn’t matter because moments later we’re 3-0 up when Niasse’s powerful shot is clawed onto the bar by Fraser Forster and it drops to Bolasie who nudges it home from a distance of two inches, a chance that we later discover had an xG of 1.01.

Southampton will go mad. And they have every right to go mad.

There’s never a good time to visit Stoke, but I guess that going there with four consecutive wins isn’t so bad. I don’t think we’re playing particularly well, but we’re making good chances and, in spite of all logic and lived experience, Niasse is putting them away. He’s scored five Premier League goals now and he, like almost everyone, will keep his place. We make just the one change, brining in the much maligned Kevin Mirallas for the injured McClean.

In all my days, I have never seen the like of this. Everton went to Stoke, set out their stall, did the simple things well and won the game comfortably. There was no panic, there was no inexplicable defensive error, no-one got themselves sent off without just cause after just eleven minutes. This isn’t us. This isn’t what we do. How can we even call ourselves Everton if we’re just going to calmly go out there and win football matches? Tom Davies gave us a fully deserved lead after half an hour, smashing home from close range when Glen Johnson failed to clear his lines. Idrissa Gueye added another midway through the second half, finishing well after he was teed up by the increasingly impressive Mirallas. It was all very straight-forward and now I can’t relax. I feel even more uneasy to be winning like this. That’s five league wins in a row. It can only mean one thing. It’s about to all go wrong.

Click here to read the next episode