Everton are a shambles. A club with ambitions of breaking into the top six, they look more likely to be challenging for the top six in the Championship than the Premier League next season.
They are very much in the midst of a relegation battle at the moment, needing to arrest their current slide as soon as possible if they are going to avoid going down for the first time since 1951.
Considering that Everton have been one of the heaviest spending clubs in world football over the last five years or so, it is remarkable that the find themselves in this position.
Speaking on The Overlap, Jamie Carragher said there is an argument to be made that Everton are one of the worst run clubs in Europe, and not solely because of their propensity to waste money.
I think Everton are the worst run club in the country, probably one of the worst run clubs in Europe. They have to be.
That's not just because they have spent lots of money and it hasn't worked, that has happened before. Some of the things Everton do, it's unbelievable what they did in January. They brought in two fullbacks (Vitaliy Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson) and then sacked the manager a week later.
They brought [Anwar] El Ghazi in, what was that about? They brought El Ghazi in from Aston Villa as a winger, Benitez brought him in on loan. I don't even know why.
That's why they've had five or six managers. I think every manager that goes into a football club thinks he's the guy to turn things around. Everyone goes into a managerial position and thinks 'the fella before me didn't have a clue, I know what I'm doing'.
That's why I fear for Frank Lampard a bit. Everton is not a place right now that you would want to go as a manager, because there is that much going on around you that it's an absolute mess. The owner hasn't got a clue, you've got the Usmanov thing right now.
As I said a few weeks ago, the players are a disgrace.
As Carragher alludes to, there are few characters in the Everton dressing room that seem suited to the type of fight they currently find themselves in. That could be an issue for manager Frank Lampard, someone who never struggled with his mentality during his playing days.
One player who will cope well is Seamus Coleman, although Carragher would go on to double down on his comments from a few weeks ago that the Irishman's very presence at Everton at this stage of his career is a damning indictment of their failings in the transfer market.
The big thing for Frank is that mainly throughout his career he has been in teams that were winning. Even if you're talking about Derby and Chelsea, he wanted it to go a bit better but they were winning most weeks. If you're getting into the play-offs, you're coming in most Mondays and you've won.
He's now at a club where he has got to get used to losing right now, with the run these players are on and the run they've been on before. He has got to be the guy who comes in on a Monday and lift the players. This is a Frank Lampard who is not used to losing.
We've all had that feeling of coming into a training ground on a Monday morning when you've had a bad defeat. Frank Lampard has never had that in his managerial career, they've all been good teams at the level they were at...
Frank Lampard got to his level obviously through his ability, but also his mentality. He was a really strong player, he just was.
Every game he would be making his runs into the box with two minutes to go to try and get his goal, he was really focused. The big problem for him is that dressing room is not like that at all.
You talk about captaincy at Man United, who even is the captain at Everton? Seamus Coleman? To be fair to Seamus, he probably shouldn't be there right now. That's down to the club and its recruitment.
If Coleman was out, who would you give that captaincy to? Nobody jumps out at you, there is no personality there at all.
That seems very harsh on Coleman. While no longer at his peak, there are certainly far bigger problems in the Everton side than the Donegal man.
If a few more of his teammate shared his desire and determination, they would not find themselves in this situation.
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