Everton’s hopes of European football may have slipped away.
The Toffees haven’t been in the best form in the past three games, and have roundly failed to capitalise on a 2-1 win over Leicester City last week.
Since then, they have been beaten 1-0 by Tottenham Hotspur in a game that was genuinely painful to watch, given the lack of action in front of both goals.
On Thursday, they drew with Southampton, as a Richarlison goal cancelled out Danny Ings’ opener.
The results leave Carlo Ancelotti’s side in 11th place in the Premier League, and they are six points behind seventh-placed Sheffield United, and 13 behind fifth-placed Manchester United.
With four games of the season remaining, Everton take on Wolves, Aston Villa, the Blades, and AFC Bournemouth.
They need a minor miracle to find their way into the Europa League and they could well be thinking of restructuring their squad under the former Chelsea boss.
Indeed, Darren Bent, the former Premier League striker, believes that one player who was only signed last summer could well be on his way out of the club.
Speaking to Football Insider, he ripped into Alex Iwobi, who has struggled to establish himself as a first-team star.
Iwobi cost the Toffees a fee that could ultimately rise to £34 million but the club have seen precious little return on that investment.
Across 23 games in the Premier League, the versatile 24-year-old, who can play on both flanks and as an attacking midfielder, has scored just once. He has failed to provide an assist.
And Bent believes he should be sold this summer.
He said: “For all his endeavour – he does work really hard and he tries really hard – there’s no end product, there’s no quality there.
“He works really hard, you’ve got to give that to him, he puts a shift in but when it comes to that real bit of quality where it’s the final delivery, scoring a goal or the final pass, he hasn’t quite got that.
“When he signed from Arsenal, for that amount of money I was like: ‘Woah, that’s a lot of money for him.’ For him, he’s not made an impact one bit and it wouldn’t surprise me if they look to offload him. Since he’s signed, he’s done next to nothing.
“When you make signings, you do so because you believe they can take the club forward and I don’t believe he’s done anything to do that.”
GIVEMESPORT'S Harry Sherlock says...
Iwobi has been so, so poor for Everton.
It is clear that the Toffees wanted to sign Wilfried Zaha from Crystal Palace last summer, making a bid for the Ivory Coast international, per Sky Sports.
They shifted gears to sign Iwobi and it has smacked of a panic buy throughout the campaign.
Per WhoScored, he has averaged just one shot per game, one key pass, and just 1.3 dribbles.
He also has 1.5 unsuccessful touches, and a passing accuracy of just 78.7%. That accuracy comes from 22 average passes, equating to just 17.3 successful passes per game.
This is a failure of spending and, ultimately, that responsibility falls on Director of Football Marcel Brands.
He dropped the ball here, as much as Iwobi fails to do anything decent with it on the pitch.