In another week of upheaval for Everton, fresh figures comparing various European club’s financial outlay makes for truly grim reading.
According to a report from an organisation called CIES Football Observatory, the club have accumulated losses of well over £300 million in spending since 2014. That is a serious amount of money to have squandered.
As we all know only too well, Everton have wasted a truly stupendous sum on failed player transfers and a succession of managers, especially since Farhad Moshiri took control of the club in February 2016.
A myriad of footballers too numerious to keep count of have come and gone, while Moshiri has got through seven permanent bosses since sacking his first manager Roberto Martinez in 2016.
And in all that while Everton have never finished higher than eighth without winning a single trophy or even reaching a final! It is an embarrassing catalogue of failure that could surely only happen to the Toffees.
Any other club with the sort of resources which have been available to previous coaches such as Ronald Koeman, Marco Silva, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez and Frank Lampard, would almost certainly have eventually managed to get it right.
That hugely varied and ecclectic collection of managers is part of the problem of course.
There is no consistency in these appointments with the owner moving from defensive to attacking and younger to much older coaches, without ever seeming to have a coherent strategy.
To be absolutely fair to Moshiri, most Evertonians welcomed his arrival and saw the injection of serious finances that his takeover represented, as potentially being the final puzzle in the jigsaw turning the Blues into genuine contenders.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened and instead the Toffees find themselves mired in the lower reaches of the Premier League having only just avoided relegation by the skin of their teeth two seasons running.
Those enormous losses have plunged the club into serious debt and could lead to punishments such as a points deduction, when the commission charged with deciding whether the Blues have broken financial relegulations makes it’s ruling next month.
This campaign has started even worse than ever before and after four matches Everton have just a solitary point to show for their efforts.
Hopes for an improvement on last season’s dire performances have been quickly dashed and we must hope that this terrible start won’t prove ultimately fatal. After all, relegation could literally spell the end of the club.