Skin Of Our Teeth

It’s hard to know where to start today.

Crewe were thrashed 4-1 by a rampant Oldham side but still managed to avoid relegation. Because Bournemouth couldn’t find a second in their 1-1 draw at Carlisle they have now been relegated with Vale, Luton and Gillingham. Cheltenham did their job with an impressive 2-1 win over Doncaster,

The Alex were woeful and on todays performance alone would have deserved relegation. It was a gutless display that summed up our season and any neutral wouldn’t have had a clue that we were the ones who desperately needed a point.

It’s not worth getting into today’s performance alone though. The entire season needs picking apart by someone at the club. It has been an absolute disaster. From Nicky Maynard’s broken leg (aka the overused excuse) to near relegation. A 4-1 home defeat to Bournemouth was a major low point and a 3-1 win over Cheltenham may just have been as good as it has gotten.

We started badly and with a few false dawns failed to improve with anything between mid-September and the new year being written off completely.

The team have proven to Steve Holland and fans that they aren’t up to it countless times. A dreadful back four, a weak midfield and a shallow attack makes it hard to believe we still survived. There are players who have disappointed throughout, like Byron Moore, Ben Rix, Chris McCready & Danny O’Donnell, there are players who let their form fade in and out like Gary Roberts, Ben Williams, Michael O’Connor and Steven Schumacher and then there are players who simply didn’t deserve this season, like Julien Baudet and Nicky Maynard.

Steve Holland may well have a major restoration project on his hands. The club is carrying too many players and it’s costing not only money but league position. We cannot rely on building a team round the core of the current squad as the core isn’t good enough (especially if Nicky Maynard departs).

The club have got to back Holland in this as we won’t be so lucky next time and League Two will be calling and League Two could well be oblivion for us.

We still have a chance to at least start building back towards the challenging for the Championship but everyone’s got to be pushing together. Holland can’t rely on a budget on Rochdale’s scale to do this.

We aren’t asking to spend silly money, we aren’t even asking for a return to the Championship next season. We just want a team who will compete at this level next season. Is it too much to ask when the club are raking in millions upon millions seemingly every summer?

BR>