There are now just three days to go before the transfer window closes again and still Everton have failed to formally announce their new manager or bring in any new players.
It is frankly unbelievable how ineptly run this football club is. After so much time has been wasted, Everton have left themselves just over two days to make arguably the most important player signings in their recent history, possibly ever.
Because, if they don’t bring in enough fresh talent to make a significant difference on the pitch, then I don’t think it will matter who is sitting in the dugout, the Blues’ will be going down.
And, the club have yet to formally confirm what we are all assuming, that Sean Dyche is the Toffees’ new manager. What a crazy fiasco it all is.
I just don’t understand why and how it’s always like this at Everton. Yes it’s complicated sorting out all the paperwork for contracts etc, but it does always seem that other clubs manage to get all this done so much more quickly and efficiently.
As for the lack of new player signings, there is far less excuse for all this delay and apparent procrastination.
After all, the Blues’ have had nearly a month to get their transfer business done and the World Cup break in November and December gave ample time for them to draw up a list of targets.
The situation has of course been complicated by the decision to change managers yet again and to do so this late into the window.
There was a good case to make that change after the dreadful Bournemouth defeats in early November and give the club plenty of time to bring a new manager in and agree transfer targets with him.
But, they decided to stick with Frank Lampard, despite the serious decline in results he had overseen, in the hope he could turn things around.
I can understand why there was a reluctance to fire him immediately, because the constant upheaval of one manager and then another is very destabilising and is unlikely to lead to consistent improvement on the pitch.
However, results are what counts and the Toffees’ have been on a horrendous run since they beat Crystal Palace in later October.
Having finally pulled the plug on Lampard’s reign, surely it would have been still possible to make at least one or two signings by now.
That’s what happened last January as Rafa Benitez got Vitalii Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson through the door very early before he himself then left just days later to make way for Lampard.
The board must have known that Benitez’s exit was likely to happen before sanctioning these signings given the appaling run of results at the time? Well maybe not, it is Everton after all!
We only have to hope that Dyche is about to be finally confirmed in post and that moves are well underway for new signings, as has been claimed. When will we get the news though?
I really do hope, as I suspect, that this club hasn’t left it too late again. Because after the failure to add more than one forward in the summer, they simply can’t afford to make the same mistake again.