In a brutally honest assessment on the eve of the final day of the last Test, England’s assistant coach maintained nobody should be off-limits in the post-mortem into a series which seems sure to end 4-0.

Farbrace also said lessons from this winter need to be learned quickly and acted on if they are to avoid another drubbing in four years’ time.

“Every series you play when you come away from home exposes issues you have in your team, and we have a choice,” he said. “Either we say we’ve had some positives or we be really honest and we say there are some areas which are not good enough and we do something about it.

“Every single one of us – whether it’s players, staff, structure, set-up, the way we prepared for the series – everybody needs to look very closely and say, ‘Have we got the right people in the right places and are we doing things the right way?’”

The outcome of the series, with England finishing its penultimate day sinking towards another defeat, would suggest plenty went wrong not only in planning but in execution.

And while Farbrace calling for a harsh spotlight to be shone on England’s preparation might seem like turkeys voting for Christmas, the assistant coach said honesty was key.

“You are always looking at how we can improve and how we can get better but the key is how honest you are with your conversations,” he said.

“There is no point me sitting here and chatting about niceties. Nice periods of play and brief glimpses do not win you Test matches and certainly not Test series.

“If England are serious about coming back here in four years’ time and winning then the planning for four years’ time needs to start in the next couple of days.

“We need to start identifying the personnel we need character-wise and skill-wise that we will need to win. Extracting bounce out of these wickets [is key]. We are going to need high-quality spin to win on these wickets.

“The honesty and the planning for next time has got to start as soon as possible.”

Farbrace’s assessment seems at odds with ECB chief executive Tom Harrison, who in Melbourne last week maintained there would be “no knee-jerk reaction” from the series and indicated coach Trevor Bayliss remained secure in his role.

But the feeling that someone has to be answerable for what has been an abject attempt to retain the Ashes is growing.

Failures have been evident throughout the squad with fading senior players unchallenged by the next generation, significant injuries to at least six of England’s fast bowlers, questionable strategy, poor discipline off the field, and a lack of spin options.

In addition, England’s batsmen, aside from Dawid Malan, have failed to stand up when they were needed.

“If we are very honest the last few days have summed up where we have been,” said Farbrace. “We haven’t been good enough with the bat. We have talked a lot about getting in good positions and we have had glimpses – Overton and Crane have shown bits of positivity – but we have only had sessions or so where we have played good cricket.

“Over the course of an innings we haven’t put Australia under pressure.”

England’s scorecard on a day when temperatures in Sydney were the hottest since 1939 at 47 degrees, had a familiar melting look to it despite Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow entering the final day digging in.

There were failures for Malan, Mark Stoneman, Alastair Cook and James Vince, the latter singled out for criticism from Farbrace after getting out edging to wicketkeeper, first slip or second slip for the 12th time in his 20-innings Test career.

Farbrace admitted the England No3, who is set to join Sydney Thunder for the latter stages of the Big Bash group games, was under pressure but appeared to suggest he would be given the chance to knock himself back into form in New Zealand.

“There is no doubt James needs to score more runs if he is going to play international cricket for England,” said Farbrace. “He knows that and it’s the same for any batsman.

“He has shown some decent starts and some glimpses and we all think, ‘Crikey, this could be the innings’. But there comes a time where this could be has to stop and he has to get big hundreds.

“If he had got a 150 in Brisbane rather than getting run out if might have been a different tour for him, but the blunt answer has to be he has to score more runs if he is to have a long career for England in Test cricket.”