It's been all talk and no action for 18 months. Just a continuing clueless path, no direction, no improvement, lowering of expectations, excuses and to come out and say we know how bad we are is admitting defeat.

Time to end the misery being suffered by the fans, the club, the players, the manager and the Burnley mob I say.

I'm convinced the players could organise themselves better on their own if they had to but a decent manager would be able to turn this squad into a good team.

I reluctantly came to the conclusion that Owen has got to go a few weeks ago. The sad fact is that despite being a very nice guy with a good philosophy of how he wants to play he simply can't turn the talk into action. At the start of the season I'd said give him ten games but after the misery of this season so far I believe ten or a hundred would make no difference.

For whatever reason this hasn't worked out. I don't know if it's the wrong time, or just the wrong place for Owen to shine as a manager or maybe it's a myriad of factors that have conspired against him and us but the sad fact is that for both our sake and his it's time to part company. I wish him all the best and hope he makes a success of himself somewhere because I do think he's a very good man who deserves to do that but it's blatantly obvious that it won't or can't be here.

LP, totally agree. I only came to this conclusion today. I was pro Coyle in spite of relegation, but said I'd give him ten games this season before I judged him. Seven games (including Crawley) in and, unfortunately, all I see is something that's broken and cannot be fixed. Having been wholly unimpressive in every game so far this season (decent spells in some, but no good 90-minute performances), I came to the conclusion that it would be irrational to wait and watch another three games of the same before coming to a conclusion.

For promotion, we'll probably need just under 2 points per game - I can't see it being as high as 2, seeing how competitive the league has been so far this season - so we'll only be around that target if we win our next three. With a defence as leaky as ours, I can't see that happening.

Awful team shape, an insistence on 4-4-2 even against good opposition, and a defence that's all over the place. Another small gripe is that our right-wing partnership seems undroppable somehow, but that's been one of our weakest areas thus far. I didn't expect Lee to be straight back to his best, but he's been outright poor in pretty much every game. It simply doesn't make sense to leave Petrov sat on the bench when he's playing so badly. Mears is good at getting forward, but his final delivery is generally dreadful and he's poor defensively.

I guess I'm on my own now!!!!!! Whoooo! Just the way I like it!

I believe that not only will OC turn it around and win away at Shef Wed, but a home win at Leeds and then on to promotion. We'll all be able to think back in future and say how so many of us had written him off and wanted him out, but I foresee a change a coming.

It has taken the team to drop to new lows and now faced with their managers neck literally on the block they will turn it around.

C'mon Owen! You can do this. Just drop SKD and play a 4-5-1 and show us that we are good enough for this league!

Owen Coyle's SUPER WHITE ARMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Based on the significant improvement I saw on Tuesday night, if Owen drops SKD, and Lee, and plays 3 midfielders plus Sordell, I have to agree with JAH. We will win.

I only got the gist of the game from my brother who attended and he said we had a lot of possession and passed the ball better but didn't create real chances.

We were chasing the game for most part and are obviously going to see a lot of the ball. I don't think that will necessarily be the case if we're level against SWed and if we go ahead, we've 'ad it!

JAH - you and I, standing together on this one!!!!!!

It'll happen just the way you said.

Just read the Bolton news and he may have lost them?

'Football Manager in Shock Post-Game Interview Cliche Scandal' would be an appropriate title for this article.

It's no use talking about what might happen. That's hope and conjection.

What we see now is all we have to work with. Poor team selection, tactics, and good ol hoofball..... worse than Mugson IMO.

Certain players like SKD, Mavies, Zat for example not allowed to be dropped.
A win away win give us some hope ....but imagine this lot in the Prem? 8-0 half time at Arsenal ......yikes !!!!!

http://www.skysports.com/video/inline/0,,16464_8093189,00.html

Based on the significant improvement I saw on Tuesday night, if Owen drops SKD, and Lee, and plays 3 midfielders plus Sordell, I have to agree with JAH. We will win.
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Drop SKD and lee, after saying....significant improvement?

We keep calling for SKD to be dropped this is now becoming comical

JAH, CEF and wressle, I hope and pray that you are right. I truly would love nothing better than to come on here at Christmas and say 'Oops jumped the gun there and Owen has re-invented himself and the team' but sadly I just can't see it.

We're going to need the biggest comeback since Lazarus to do this one.

lpp - as a poster I look out for due to the fact you clearly think before you post and put your comments down in a thoughtful way, things must be bad if you now feel there is no way of turning things round!!!!

I don't want to re-open the disgusting occurrence of last week, but even last night's result shows that anything is possible in this crazy league.

CEF it's the away form that especially bothers me. We're simply too soft away and no matter how nice the goals we score might be (Eagles free kick was a thing of beauty) we always concede more.

The sad fact is that even at home we're easy to open up at the back and I just think Owen can not change it. In some ways he's as one dimensional in his approach as Megson was but on the opposite end of the spectrum. Yes attacking football is needed to win games, promotions, plaudits and so on but it MUST be balanced and built on a foundation of a solid defence. With us it simply isn't. We don't seem to have that mentality of shut the door about us and that cost us last season and is already costing us this.

Owen's a great guy and I have no doubt has the stuff in him to be a very good manager but it hasn't worked here for him or or for us and it's time we acknowledged that, said thank you and parted company. I take no pleasure in typing this but I truly don't now see another option.

I am sure like you, we have all spent a lot of time thinking about why it has gone so spectacularly wrong since the FA Cup semi. Before that game, things were going well. I was disappointed with the way we tailed off that season, but we were always safe, and most of us went into last season expecting another good showing.

When the fixtures came out, there was a collective gasp on here and it was pretty clear we would be near the bottom after 8 games. But it seemed a sort of panic set in, and OC struggled to keep the players' heads up. This is what I found most disappointing, because of all Coyle's attributes, man-management appears to be one of his strengths.

Between the middle of December and March, things did improve and at one point we were out of the bottom 3. What then happened exposed Coyle's main weakness. People can go on about injuries and what happened to Muamba, but that is side-stepping the issue. When we needed to consolidate on the above said improvement, Coyle started tinkering, made some shocking tactical decisions, and our soft-centre was exposed. At the same time, Wigan and QPR started getting results that defied logic, but there are always results like that during the run-in. We weren't able to get those sorts of results, and our last 6 games got us relegated, rather than our first 6 games.

Now I know all of the above is obvious, because it happened. I also know that I am considered a 'Coyle lover' on here. Maybe I am just a stubborn fool, or maybe I don't understand football!! My thinking is that the days of BSA are long gone. His model, which established us in the Prem, isn't possible these days. We were losing money hand over fist during the last 5 years, and something had to change.

Sadly, the nett effect is we just don't have the quality of player now, because we can't afford it. Because of this, I would rather give OC a chance this season. And by 'chance', I mean somewhere between 10 and 20 games. I still know he can turn it around, but I also accept he is rapidly running out of time.

Replacements are thin on the ground, and unless we get very lucky, a new manager might not just be able to waltz in and wave a magic wand.

Agreed Cef at least on the whole magic wand thing but I have to say that I think that Owen has NO chance of turning it round. Another manager with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective will look at options Owen can't or won't or simply hasn't considered strongly enough.

I agree totally that we can't spend stupid money and as a result we won't see the likes of Hierro, Djorkaeff, Jay Jay, Campo et al in our shirt anytime soon if ever again but we can and do have some very good players that we're simply not seeing the best from and some real donkeys who don't belong in league two much less the championship.

We have so many problems to address it's almost scary and from where I sit owen has run out of ideas and time.

CEF - a very different opinion to mine, but excellently constructed and balanced. Fair play

i however believe, the "When we needed to consolidate on the above said improvement, Coyle started tinkering, made some shocking tactical decisions, and our soft-centre was exposed"

This was my time that i believed he wasnt good enough. All succesful managers should be able to adapt and change things. That was one of Big Sams massive plus points. I remember him making a change after 20 mins because the team he selected just wasnt going to work against the team we were playing. It worked, we won, and that change made a massive difference.

i entirely agree that the standard of footballer has changed, but i dont think it has changed to the degree people believe, i just think BSA played to our strengths and made the team look better than it was. Coyle on the other hand, is making the team look worse than it actually is. he is still trying to make them play football, which in an attacking sense, we look fairly good, unfortunately, in order to play said nice football requires commited numbers forward, leaving an average defence very exposed.

The other thing i realised was... the victory against arsenal after stoke. My gosh, that team that day worked incredibly hard and earned its victory through sheer grit. That grit has sadly now all but dissappeared, we dont look like a hardworking team, we look lost, unsure.

i hope Coyle absolutely slaps me in the face and proves me so so wrong. Just for me, the rot set in a very very long time ago

Clegg

It's not so much the 'standard' of the players I was referring to. It was more the 'model' employed by BSA, of being able to persuade players like Djorkaeef, Okochs, Hierro and Campo to give the Prem a try.

Nowadays, the money on offer in the MLS and Qatar is too good to refuse.

I can't imagine Messi and Ronaldo giving a Stoke, Norwich or Fulham a try when they get into their late 30's.