Everton's manager Howard Kendall returns from holiday this morning knowing he may have to emulate his team's great escape of eight days ago if he is to remain in charge at Goodison Park.

It is believed that the Merseyside club are seriously considering replacing Kendall, after only 10 months in the job that nobody wanted, with Leicester City's manager Martin O'Neill.

Kendall, who will be 52 on Friday, is scheduled to meet the club's board this afternoon, his second appearance before his employers since the draw with Coventry guaranteed that Everton would stay up. Although Kendall has two years left on his contract, Everton's chairman, Peter Johnson, may opt to appoint his fourth manager at the club in little more than four years.

O'Neill would almost certainly have been installed at Everton last summer had Johnson not delayed naming a successor to Joe Royle in the mistaken belief that he could persuade the former England manager, Bobby Robson, to take the job.

A decision to part with Kendall would trigger an immediate move for O'Neill, who won the League Cup with Leicester last year and is weary of trying to persuade the club's board to slacken the purse-strings.

In the wake of the recent departure of the Leicester chairman, Tom Smeaton, moreover, it is conceivable that O'Neill will shortly resign his post at Filbert Street irrespective of whether Everton make an approach.

He has an escape clause in his contract which permits him to join a club willing to pay a prearranged sum in compensation, believed to be £850,000. If he were to resign before any move by Everton, though, he would technically be a free agent and Leicester would receive nothing.

Johnson's dilemma is simple. Having appointed, and then sacked, Mike Walker and Royle, the multi-millionaire businessman must decide whether to stand by Kendall, now in his third spell as manager of the Merseyside club.