With Everton sat joint-bottom of the Premier League, Frank Lampard was relieved of his duties as manager by the club on Monday afternoon after almost a year in charge.
As a club in crisis, with relegation a serious threat and the relationship between the board and fans now virtually unrecoverable, what has happened at Goodison Park and where do the Toffees go from here?
Firstly, it is important to note that the problem at Everton is multi-faceted, and while most of their recent managers and players have not been up to it, after so many years of continued failure, the scrutiny must now be aimed mainly at the board.
Farhad Moshiri took over the club in 2016 to the delight of Evertonians who thought that a wealthy investor coming in could bring them similar instant success that was seen at Chelsea and Manchester City after their respective takeovers.
Having not won the title since 1987, or any trophy for that matter since 1995, it was exciting times to think that they could kick-on from the steady but solid years under David Moyes and the up and down tenure of Roberto Martinez.
While Everton performed reasonably well for the next few seasons, it became apparent very quickly that there was absolutely no long-term plan in place, and a reckless, scattergun approach when it came to spending money, buying players and giving out contracts was unsustainable.
Everton have had three men appointed in the role of Director of Football since Moshiri came in, and still none of them have worked out despite all having good track records at previous clubs.
Steve Walsh was the man responsible for bringing the likes of Riyad Mahrez and N'Golo Kante to Leicester City, Marcel Brands was the mastermind behind PSV Eindhoven's regular excellent recruitment policy between 2010 and 2018, and current DoF Kevin Thelwell has worked for the Red Bull sports group which has a fantastic record of scouting and nurturing young talent.
However, Walsh catastrophically failed, being one of the men responsible for the disastrous 2017 summer transfer window which saw Everton spend over £150m before hiring Sam Allardyce to save them from potential relegation just three months later.
Since leaving though, both Walsh and Brands have claimed that they were essentially not listened to by the board and namely the owner, Moshiri.
Days before resigning as DoF last season, Brands was filmed saying "is it only the players?" to an irate supporter after a 4-1 defeat to Liverpool at Goodison Park, which can be induced as Brands saying the board should also be taking the blame, and his subsequent actions show that he had clearly fallen out and had disagreements with them.
What frustrates Everton supporters the most is the lack of communication, both from the board to the fans, and between the board members themselves.
The shambolic 2017 transfer window saw Everton spend £65m - plus big salaries - to sign Wayne Rooney, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Davy Klaassen.
It is evident that three different people at the club wanted the three separate players: manager Ronald Koeman wanted Klaassen, board member Bill Kenwright wanted Rooney, and DoF Walsh wanted Sigurdsson.
All three players played in the same position and they still had not bought a striker to replace the outgoing Romelu Lukaku that summer either, so there was evidently no plan on how to spend these new fortunes wisely.
Fast forward four years and those decisions, among a myriad of others, meant Everton were so financially restricted that they could only spend £1.7m in an entire summer transfer window, while this season, they had to sell Richarlison to fund any vital incomings.
After giving players like Cenk Tosun, Sandro Ramirez, Michael Keane, Abdoulaye Doucoure, and the injury-prone Yerry Mina contracts for four to five years on excess of £100,000 a week, they now struggle to offload many of them when it is clear they have no future at the club.
That is where the final glaring issue lies - the current playing squad.
Lampard's record was not great, as he took just 35 points from his 38 Premier League games in charge, but this is a team that is full of regular internationals, who for one reason or another were simply not performing.
Choruses of 'you are not fit to wear the shirt' rang around Goodison for the first time in modern memory after the recent defeat to Southampton, which perhaps alludes to the fact Everton fans think this group of players are disinterested at the club's demise.
Even players with limited footballing ability have been adored around these parts before because of the passion, fight and determination they showed to make up for their other deficiencies, but this is now an Everton team that gets outfought as well as outplayed by almost every side in the Premier League.
Replacing Richarlison essentially with Dwight McNeil and Dominic Calvert-Lewin's form nosediving off a cliff means Everton simply have no threat in attack, and are a very easy side to defend against, meaning opponents can focus their attention on their own offensive work before games.
The most damning statistic is that the other four sides in the bottom five have only won five games between them in the last few months, but four of those wins were against Everton.
Bournemouth's one win in 11, Southampton's one win in nine and West Ham United's one win in eight all came against the Toffees recently.
Therefore, there can be no complaints about Lampard's dismissal, as this is largely the same squad that were top-four candidates and got 59 points under Carlo Ancelotti in 2020-21, but very few fans were rejoicing at the news of his exit given that Lampard was often the only voice they heard coming from the club that said how it was, and was honest.
Lampard was embraced because of how much he cared about the supporters and how desperate he was to succeed for the club's sake, but in the modern game, more is required, and just having a board full of 'local Evertonians' as Moshiri recently put it in a written letter to some Everton fan groups, is not good enough either.
Manchester City and Chelsea have not won numerous trophies from having 'locals' on the board, they hired professional experts who know how to efficiently run the footballing side of a club.
Their stubbornness to let go of power, namely Kenwright, means they will still be calling the shots when it comes to appointing a new manager, and they have the decision whether to focus on a short-term fix that will save them from relegation, or take a risk and try to build something that can be successful for the future.
The Everton fans have already shown great contempt towards the pragmatic approaches of Allardyce and Rafael Benitez, so hiring the current bookies-favourite Sean Dyche may keep Everton up, but it has no chance of working long-term, considering that the aforementioned two only lasted a matter of months at the helm.
Marcelo Bielsa is allegedly Moshiri's ideal candidate, but it is plain to see that Everton do not have the players capable of playing his fast, energetic football, as there is next to no pace in the team and fitness remains a huge worry.
Duncan Ferguson and Rooney are also high on the list of potential replacements and if either were appointed it would simply show the laziness and cluelessness of a board who have repeatedly got big calls wrong when it comes to hiring managers and signing players.
Brighton & Hove Albion, Wolves and Aston Villa all moved quickly and secured top quality managers earlier this season who have pedigree and coached at the highest level before.
If Everton want to go in a similar direction, it could be worth looking into managers such as Marcelino (formerly of Villarreal, Valencia and Athletic Bilbao) or Domenico Tedesco (formerly of Schalke and RB Leipzig), as some keen-eyed supporters have suggested.
However, the fanbase have had to rather jokingly admit and come to the realisation that the chances of the Everton board knowing who either of those two candidates are is pretty slim, but they have a point because that sort of amateurishness is what led to the appointment of managers like Benitez.
Dyche will undoubtedly be a suitable candidate at the moment if the board decide to place their eggs in the 'survival at all costs' basket, but where they go from there would be a huge question.
He got Burnley into Europe during his spell at Turf Moor but would he be able to replicate that with Everton in a much richer, higher-quality Premier League now with Newcastle United, Brighton and Brentford all now in the equation along with the regular 'top six'?
Marcelino would certainly be an interesting appointment should they go a little left-field, given that he has dealt with boardroom chaos before at both Villarreal and Valencia, and it would be one that perhaps gives the supporters some hope that those making the decisions do have some footballing nous about them.
With Arnaut Danjuma now looking likely to join Tottenham Hotspur after refusing to send his official documents to the FA this morning in an utterly bizarre transfer twist, the circus at Everton goes on, but they desperately need to get attacking options through the door before the deadline, as well as a manager.
Everton fans just want better results on the pitch and a board who are competent, honest and open with them, and after throwing them under the bus in front of the media world with a scathing, unsubstantiated attack, accusing some of physical assault and sending death threats, it means there is almost zero chance of reconciliation between the two sides ever again.
After spending £700m on transfers alone, Everton have not just gone backwards, they have completely plummeted to their lowest place, arguably ever, and it is hard to see how they will survive this season with the toxic atmosphere currently infecting the club. body check tags ::
