Playing wise, the Club's in a mess. For a long time the temptation has been to tweek what's there as opposed to build from the bottom up. I believe this is in part a consequence of the ultimate failure of Dave Jones' team[s] failing at the last hurdle so often, and in that sense it succeeded.

But we've becoming progressively a less and less skilled squad as each year passes. There is, literally, no other team in the Championship and probably few in league 1 either, whose play resembles ours. I commented earlier this season that this is a team in decline. The competitiveness of the Championship would make it impossible to 'rebuild' without dropping down a division. I'm not sure a number of our players aren't tiring of the week in week out attrition either,