Having a go at the players.

I honestly do not want to be controversial here but I am wondering if you think that we should be more critical of the players for some of the performances we have seen recently.

Let me say firstly that I put the blame for our current plight firmly at the door of Ridsdale and the current board. The buck starts and stops with them. I also have no faith in Dave Jones either who I feel is a manager of limited ability wno is tactically incompetent and incapable of any motivation. I fully support the march and will be there next Saturday.

We always hear that we should support the team for the match and restrict our criticims to after the game or, as next Saturday, before. When the team has been booed recently, there has been criticism of those booing by the manager and other fans.

One can of course provide a number of reasons for the poor performances and we have heard most of them before ( tiredness, can't change the team, couldn't strengthen the team in January, injuries, have to learn lessons etc) but it's sometimes too easy to look for excuses when things are going wrong.

There is no doubt that at times this season we have looked fantastic but how can the same group of players who showed such commitment in games against Bristol City and West Brom be so lacking against Barnsley and Preston.

These are young , fit , etremely well paid professional sportsmen. I may have a bit more sympathy for them being tired if we saw full on commitment from all of the players, chasing, harrying and busting a gut for 90 minutes of every game but we know that doesn't happen. It's rare these days that I agree with anything Jones says or does but these players DO need to take a long hard look at themselves. (So does Jones but that's another topic).

Do we keep backing a group of players who have often shown themselves this season to be lacking in commitment to the cause? Reallistically we must as they are all we have at the moment. Whilst disagreeing with the booing of my own team, how else are we going to show them that such gutless displays are not acceptable?

It raelly seems that no lessons have been learnt from last eason at all. We seem to have a board of directors of staggering incompetence, a manager who is incapable of controlling his team and a group of platers who too frequently play in a manner that shows that they really couldn't give a shit.