Essendon coach Ben Rutten is on shaky ground as the AFL club's board weighs up making a late bid for four-time premiership mastermind Alastair Clarkson.
Bombers president Paul Brasher's resignation is reportedly set to to be confirmed on Monday as the fallout from a disastrous 2022 campaign continues.
The club's board called an emergency meeting for Monday, a day after Essendon were humbled by 84 points by Port Adelaide.
It was a second consecutive embarrassing loss for the Bombers, after a 27-point defeat to GWS - one of only three teams below them on the ladder.
Former Channel 10 sport boss David Barham is reportedly set to take over from Brasher, whose exit puts Rutten's job in the firing line.
Brasher was the 39-year-old's biggest public supporter through Essendon's mid-year football operations review.
And if Rutten is sacked - just shy of two years into a three-year deal - it would open the door for the Bombers to enter the race for unattached coach Clarkson.
The former Hawthorn tactician is considering an offer from North Melbourne and has also been in talks with GWS, having sat out of football in 2022 after leaving the Hawks last year.
Brasher had previously declared the review would not oust Rutten and that the coach would see out the final year of his contract in 2023, adding the review would focus on supporting the football department rather than culling from it.
Essendon announced the review - led by football director Sean Wellman - after winning just two of their first 11 games.
The Bombers had improved to lift their record to 7-12 before their recent form slump.
The underwhelming season follows an impressive 2021 campaign, in which Essendon defied pre-season expectations to make the finals.
After the Power defeat, Rutten admitted it was a performance level the club could not tolerate.
"Certainly it's not a great result in terms of tonight's performance, no question about that," Rutten told reporters.
"It's about us being really strong and really clear as a footy club and as a group of players about where we're going and what we're trying to build.
"It's never going to be smooth sailing, clean progression to becoming a great team, but performances like that, it's not stuff that we can tolerate or accept and we won't."
Essendon legend Matthew Lloyd said the Bombers "couldn't be any further" from being a great football club, and called for a complete external review.
"It's been a disaster of a season ... when you play with no spirit, and you play with no heart, it's the way you lose," Lloyd told AFL Media.
"That was as bad a loss as you could ever imagine with the lack of spirit, the lack of defensive pressure that they played with and that'll fall on the coach.
"You'd expect something has to give whether it's at board level, administration level, the coaching staff, you just can't accept performances like that."
