It took Frank admission to sum up Blues

FRANK LAMPARD, with just two full seasons in football management and no real experience of relegation battles, is charged with leading Everton to safety.

To help him, he’s brought in Dele Alli – whose contribution at Spurs was two Premier League goals in 18 months – and Donny van de Beek, who needed a regular application of Sudocrem for his backside, so long did he spend on the bench at Manchester United.

Everton are in a relegation fight. Employing Lampard (below) is a major gamble – as is taking on these two imports.

Regardless of the off-field chaos, the club need to roll up their sleeves and dig in.

With a new stadium on the horizon and a well-intentioned – if naive – owner, the Toffees have plenty going for them.

But they have to start the rebuild by protecting their status.

Lampard at least admitted the gravity of the situation at his press conference. There now needs to be a recognition in the club that it is going to a bitter fight from now until the end of the campaign.

WHO knows whether Mikel Arteta was right or wrong in his treatment of Pierre-emerick Aubameyang?

The Gabon striker could have just taken against the Spaniard or Arsenal’s boss might have handled a tricky situation the wrong way as their relationship nosedived.

But there are a couple of points to be made after the 32-year-old quit for Barcelona this week.

The first is the question of if Arteta has cut off his nose to spite his face as the Gunners are now short of frontline strikers.

More importantly, Arsenal will have come to a financial arrangement with Aubameyang over his contract – it won’t have been ripped up. At £350,000 a week, and following a £55million transfer that’s a helluva vote of confidence in the club’s manager by his paymasters. Plenty of other clubs would have told him to patch it up and get the forward back on the pitch.