It has been coming for a while. Perhaps it should have happened a while ago. Maybe last season when we lost seven games in a row? Maybe at the end of last season? Maybe just before the last two-week international break - or the one before that - to give some breathing space before the next game - like Bolton did?

It seemed that it would come on Saturday night. Or perhaps Sunday? Or surely Monday when the office re-opened for business? Until finally, on Tuesday night, after another home defeat and with Chris Hutchings doing the press interviews, it seemed certain. So certain that my son and I pulled over in a lay-by on the way home to London to hear the last rites on Radio Suffolk before we drove out of range. We spent our time discussing what we would do now if it were our decision.

I'd like to say, for all this, that I am genuinely sorry for PJ as an individual. He has performed with integrity and deserves our respect. It is sad to see any individual who is falling short in his performances being the subject of personal insults. As lovers or players of sport, we should all be above that.

That said, and whilst - amazingly - the final decision still did not come until today, we are where we are, and I'd now like to present the Nik and Andy 10-point plan for Town's immediate future.

(1) Accept now that it's quite likely we are going down (which it is - all the stats* will tell you that).

(2) So plan now for a League One campaign next season

(3) Shift *all* loanees out of the club and build from the base (ie restore Tommy Smith, Luke Hyam, Scott Loach etc to their starting positions); maybe exclude those who are here with a genuine view to a permanent signing (eg Daryl Murphy definitely, Reo-Coker possibly). In a similar vein, release anyone whose contract expires at the end of this season and hasn't signed a new one.

(4) Appoint Mick Mills as caretaker-manager to the end of the season to oversee the planning process for next season. If nothing else, he knows intimately all the background relating to all of our players and won't spend half a season finding out for himself. He talks good sense during matches and sees the weaknesses in our manager's strategies

(5) Rather than make a hasty appointment from this list of 34 (which no doubt any of us could compile in a few minutes), use the next six months of bought time to explore what we really need for 2013-14 and beyond. Entrusting selection from a shortlist to non-footballing businessmen hasn't worked for some time at this football club.

(6) Don't consider anyone who thinks that 4-5-1 is a viable formation. Or at least ask them what they know about designing a team that is suitable to play 4-5-1. Ask them this question specifically in the interview.

(7) Coaching Hint One. Ban short corners. Why does the team go to all that effort to earn a set piece, of which the primary objective is to steer a stationary ball into the opposition's penalty area, only to reject it in favour of a speculative alternative? The same comments apply to free kicks around the box.

(8) Coaching Hint Two. Stay awake, do things quickly, before the opposition have time to re-establish their composure - like they do to us. But focus on the basics and play percentages, not flash risky plays which usually concede possession while our players are out of position. Good sides in all sports aren't flash - look at Barcelona (football), the All Blacks (rugby), Australia (cricket when they were in their pomp). By and large, they just do the basics right and seize the moment.

(9) If by some unlikely fluke we stay up, add Mick Mills to the list of candidates (if he's not there already).

(10) Otherwise, appoint a new manager at the end of the season and appoint MM to a Director of Football role to provide the support for our non-football management that they most desperately need.

*Those stats:

Surveying the last 10 years at the beginning of October, 40% of the clubs in the bottom three went down. Clubs that reacted and changed their manager succeeded in reducing the odds to 33%. Those that didn't - well, 47% of those fell through the trapdoor.

It's curious that sides that were bottom after 10 games fared slightly better than those who were 23rd. Maybe hitting the floor is the "tipping point" that finally triggers action!

In fact, 70% of teams who are bottom at this stage of the season do not get relegated.

60% of teams who are second from bottom at this stage of the season do not get relegated

Oddly, only 50% of teams who are third from bottom at this stage do not get relegated

On three occasions, none of the teams in the bottom three at this stage got relegated - 2010-11, 2008-9, 2007-8

But on one occasion, all three teams in the bottom three at this stage got relegated - 2002-3

By now therefore, having lost two more matches, but having changed our manager, our odds of going down are probably just shy of 40%. That means it's serious.

If you were told that you had a 40% of dying before the end of the season, or a 40% of redundancy within the next seven months, you'd be concerned. So just because it's less than 50% doesn't mean it isn't going to happen. And if the next few weeks aren't managed well, it will happen.

Also, do not assume that bouncing back is automatic. Of the 30 relegation places over the past 10 seasons, three teams have been relegated twice! Brighton, Sheffield Wednesday and Scunthorpe. Bizarrely, two of these are currently yet again back in the Championship.

Ignoring the three who were relegated last season, and haven't had a chance to go anywhere, that means that there are 24 clubs who have been relegated over nine seasons.

Two are now in the Premiership

Eight are back in the Championship

Seven are still in League One

Five are now in League Two

Two are now in the Conference Premier

Ten teams out of 24 have bounced back, plus Scunthorpe, who bounced back only to go down a second time. So again, it's about a 40% chance.

But it's not a given - a significant number have got stuck in League One, while it is almost as likely that clubs go further down than that they will come back up. Note that two are now in the Conference! Which group do you think we would fall into?

And for the record:

Norwich Premiership

Southampton Premiership

Brighton Championship

Charlton Championship

Leeds Championship

Leicester Championship

Millwall Championship

Nottingham F Championship

Peterborough Championship

Sheffeld W Championship

Colchester League One

Crewe League One

Preston League One

Scunthorpe League One

Sheffield U League One

Walsall League One

Wimbledon League One (as MK Dons)

Bradford League Two

Gillingham League Two

Plymouth League Two

Rotherham League Two

Southend League Two

Grimsby Conference Premier

Luton Conference Premier

Finally, in the year that we were relegated from the Premiership, Manchester City won the Championship! So anything is possible!

kozmik added 18:57 - Oct 24 10 points from the next 4 games would do me!
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mike_holmes1990 added 19:03 - Oct 24 Cant agree with 1 or 2 I think by the end of writing your blog you were beginning to doubt the wisdom of accepting relegation. The trouble isa long term plan can only be disrupted by relegation. What if Martin signs a contract, but then hands in a transfer request if/when we get relegated. Loach is poached etc. Relegation means starting again. PJ is infamous for saying 'its all about next season' during derbys campaign. Though saying that i do agree the next appointment needs to be with the long term future in mind, not someone just to firefight against the drop.

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naa added 19:18 - Oct 24 You seem to contradict yourself. You suggest relegation is almost inevitable, the you suggest we have a 60-70% chance of survival. So we are more likely to stay up than not. So why on earth should we plan for relegation? Just because it might happen doesn't mean we should plan specifically for it. You also point out how risky relegation could be to us, with no guarantee of success at all. I think Norwich are the exception, not the rule so we need to get over the idea that it could happen to us. So again, why on earth should we be planning for relegation? I agree that we need to start thinking long term and not hope for yet another short-term fix But Mick Mills has failed whenever he has tried management (many many years ago) so isn't a good choice at all. As a director of football, maybe, but even then he has no experience of this role at all. I have no answers, but think a young manager, or someone with experience of working on a budget and bringing through youth players is what we need.

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apm_77 added 19:42 - Oct 24 Personally I've no idea where this Mick Mills obsession some fans have come from - not managed for years, didn't cut it when he did. Club legend but no manager. I don't think we'll go down; string two or three wins and a handful of draws together and all of a sudden we're mid table. Look at Palace in 03/04 - bottom at Christmas, not mid October, and went up through the Play Offs. So it can be done; one thing Jewell did do was put together a squad that, on paper, is one of the stronger in the division. Regrettably he lost the dressing room and the fans with a series of bizarre loan signings who should now be packed off back to their parent clubs (with the possible exception of Higginbottom). Also, I just do not buy this "relegation could be a good thing" point of view; it would be an unmitigated disaster for this club, the fans would run for the hills, players thinking they were joining a club eyeing the Premiership not far behind them. Face it, we've got a half empty stadium now, imagine what it would be like for the visit of MK Dons, Crawley or Stevenage. I for one simply refuse to accept that we should be considering life in the 3rd tier with 3/4 of the season left. Otherwise, excellent article!

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yorkshire added 19:48 - Oct 24 Utter load of rubbish
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Lightningboy added 19:54 - Oct 24 Apologies but you completely lost me when you started saying that we should more or less accept relegation this season??!...that's utter nonsense..we're 4 point adrift,not 14 or 24..we've still got 34 games to play - that's what,102pts. I think with the right manager we should still be looking to aim for the middle of the league at the very least this season , even the top 10...it can be done..anything is possible in this division.

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marco007 added 20:30 - Oct 24 Good points raised but I do not see how we can write off our whole season after 12 games!! I agree that we need to bed in youth and can not understand why players such as Hyam and Carson are not given a fair run. Short term, unfit loanees are not the solution and it has only confirmed the panic and lack of strategy that PJ had. I for one,want a young, hungry manager with lower league experience so that we can stop shopping at Waitrose and concentrate on our level..... Tesco's and below :) Let's get some pride back in our club and have players that feel honoured to wear a Town shirt !!

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dude added 21:11 - Oct 24 Get mills in for a month until the norwegian season ends. Then, the baby faced assassin.
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DurhamTownFan added 21:32 - Oct 24 1: no it is not inevitable with lots to play for. 4: no WAY! Mills may be a legend, but has been out of the game for an age, and is now an average tactical commentator at best. Bad blog for.my money. Blogs are about posing questions and opening debates, not prescribing personal and obviously debateable opinions.
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GeorgiDoundarov added 21:52 - Oct 24 Very odd blog... I am astonished to say the least. What kind of a fan should expect his team to relegate after only 12 matches being played of a 46 games season? I remember back in 1995 when we lost 9:0 by Man. Utd and when it was clear we will not be capable of keeping the Premiership status I still kept hope until the very moment it was theoretically obvious we cannot escape relegation. Now it should be quite the opposite - correct me if I am wrong but we were all expecting (and hoping) for top 6 spot only 9-10 matches ago after that win at Watford, right? This means we have a team quite capable of at least mid-table. The only reason we are bottom was that Jewel lost the plot. And don't get me wrong - even I was never a fan of his, I still can say in different circumstances ha may have been a better position than where he ended up. Anyways since he is already gone if the right manager is appointed and he gets the right players, I can't really see a reason why not we still push for top end of the table this season if not more. It is a sad example but our own Roy Keane did that when he joined Sunderland. So I am supporting quite the opposite than the blog sugests - find the right man ASAP and give him chance to move us up. Why lose another season with a caretaker and etc. Let us at least get a manager who will use this season to know the team and get ready for the next. And for me that right man was always been Alan Curbishley. Hope he will get on board but whatever happens we should have a little more belief than what the author of this blog suggest... I disagree with most of the statements there - only points 6 and 7 (to some extent) are ones I can agree with. Good luck to Town and let us hope we will get the right man this time around and expect better times finally. COYB!

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fifeblue added 22:16 - Oct 24 Anyone who thinks Mick Mills is a viable manager, even part-time, needs his head examined. He has failed in this role consistently in the past. Anyone can talk a good game or tactics on the radio. This blog is utter nonsense. To write off the season in October is ridiculous. Burley's team was bottom in October one season and ended up in the play-offs.
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KangarooBlue added 01:17 - Oct 25 What a bizarre blog, to pretty much write off our season in October is ludicrous. Points 1 & 2 are, to put it bluntly, pathetic.
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Lord_Mac added 01:17 - Oct 25 Appreciate the comments! As I tried to indicate, the ideas were based on a heart-on-sleeve discussion in a lay-by last night! I haven't said that relegation is a certainty, only that it is "quite likely" and is probably currently around 40%. Yes, we can all quote instances where teams have stormed out of the bottom three, but for every one of those, there are (slightly) more where that didn't happen. That's fact, not speculation. Of course we should all keep hope alive until it's mathematically impossible, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't plan for the eventuality. Preparing for a 40% risk is simply prudent business management. If a meteor was on course to hit the earth next year with a 40% of hitting, you'd expect some planning to be going on, wouldn't you? Really, this blog is supposed to be asking questions about whether we should now take a serious look at what's best for this club long-term. Is appointing the next manager off the rank more or less likely to keep us up than the "plan for relegation scenario" I've outlined? Otherwise, what are we going to do to turn things round? More signings? More loanees? More turnover of players? Really? More desperate short-term tactics designed to dig us out of this mess, but merely preparing for the next one? It's interesting that, based on his record in the distant past, many people do not think that Mick Mills would make a good manager, yet we have been happy to accept managers with a track record of failure in the recent past or even no track record at all. Just don't blame me when Gary Megson walks through the door!

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ernie added 01:30 - Oct 25 did you write this in your sleep? utter tripe..
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ernie added 01:36 - Oct 25 your 'coaching tips' look like they've been made up by a two year old
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naa added 09:11 - Oct 25 So, you say relegation is "quite likely" at 40% (arguable, as your stats show it is much closer to 30%, you extrapolated to 40% rather blindly). You do realise that that means that there's a 60-70% chance of survival don't you? So, in other words, it's more likely we'll stay up. Why not accept that as a start point instead? Mick Mills talks sense on the radio, and this has formed your entire opinion of him as a manager. Lucky you aren't our chairman! He failed a few times about 25 years ago. Why on earth do you think he'll do any better now!? Or even want the job? There's a lot more to management than spotting tactical issues. For all you know Jewell may have been saying the same things to the players that Mills says, but for whatever reason they didn't put them into practice. AS for managaers who have failed recently, well, other than Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger pretty much every manager in work in this coutry has failed at some point. I'm sure Newcaslte fans weren't happy with Pardew as he'd failed at Charlton in a much lower league... The point is, it's not easy to tell who will succeed and who will fail. There are no good and bad appointments at the time they are appointed (except for Megson, of course).

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Lord_Mac added 11:28 - Oct 25 naa "Quite likely" to me means a sufficient risk to be concerned about. Whether it is more likely than not isn't defined. But the greater the risk and its consequences, the more one should start to be concerned about smaller percentage risks and start to plan for them. And yes, I can subtract from 100, so I do understand that the converse is more likely, even though in this case not by a lot. I haven't blindly extrapolated 30% to 40% - quite the reverse in fact. I went to a lot of effort to try to find out how much trouble we are in. I've estimated the statistical likelihood to be 40% from the data of the past 10 years, then refined it to 33% and 47%, depending on whether the manager changes or not. So on Tuesday night, our chance of relegation, based on this data, was 47%, plus the added amount for another two games now having gone without adding to our points tally. That is virtually evens. Now, we are 33%, plus a bit for the extra two games, so nearer 40% than 30%, Probably about 36%. in my view, this is a very precarious situation and more than just a passing cloud. In truth, if you were to plot our progress over the past 10 years, you would see that, despite investment, we are slowly spiralling downwards from a Premier aide, to a play-off contender, to a mid-table side, to a relegation candidate. This isn't just a short-term phenomenon. Many of the preparation steps for League One are only doing things that many supporters have been calling for anyway (appoint a director of football, reduce the loanee count, focus on our young players, play a 4-4-2 formation) and it may well be that taking these steps are the best way of staying up as well. As far as Mick Mills is concerned, you can go online and compare his win percentage to those of Paul Jewell and Roy Keane and find that there isn't a lot of difference between Mills' performances elsewhere and Keane and Jewell at our club. What is also obvious is how our managers' performances have been getting progressively worse since Burley. Here they are: Overall (Ipswich) George Burley 42.73 (45.52) Joe Royle 39.05 (42.86) Jim Magilton 37.17 (37.82) Roy Keane 38.67 (34.57) Paul Jewell 38.47 (34.12) Mick Mills 34.14 (-) In my judgement, Mills during games has predicted things which Jewell has not acted upon, and those things have come to pass. An example would be Tuesday, when we went to 4-4-2 and our centre midfield was entrusted to Wellens and Reo-Coker - who were both knackered. Jewell took off Drury, who had been uncomfortable in an advanced role but would have been fit enough to drop back into the centre midfield role. The second goal came straight through the channel that Mills said it would. Five games in a row we have failed to hold a lead. Why? Seeing these things before they happen and acting upon them is the key part of management on match day. We can all make decisions in our offices with loads of time, or even appoint people to plug our deficiencies, but the hard part is what you have to do under time pressure when the chips are really down. You ask if Mills would want the job. He has said he would, publicly on the radio. I do not know if he is right for the long term, but I do think he would be a good stop-gap while we make the right long-term decision. And if I were chairman, I would at least try to work with the guy to compensate for the areas of the job in which has struggled in the past, which surely is the role of a chairman? As things stand, it looks like we are going to revert to type and appoint another manager off the rank.

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murraybrunning added 12:18 - Oct 25 I disagree with the fact we need to accept we are going down. 2 wins and we're right back in it
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Lord_Mac added 12:51 - Oct 25 Gosh. I said quite likely.....quite likely and certain aren't the same thing. It has taken us 12 games to get one last-minute win and we haven't won at home since 31 March. Two wins would be quite some turnaround!
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naa added 13:25 - Oct 25 lord_mac: ok so you say it's around 36%. fine. You do seem to be getting upset with people suggesting you said relegation was inevitable as you only said 'quite likely', but you do later suggest that it would be a 'miracle' if we survive. Anyway, your blog clearly sets out from that position to write this season off, get an inexperienced manager in (recently, speaking) and plan for the fu I agree that we need a long term strategy, we agree there, but I completely disagree with the idea of giving up on this season to plan properly (whatever that even means)

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awayfan added 13:26 - Oct 25 Just to comment on the discussion above on % chance of relegation, the biggest odds currently available for Town to be relegated are 13/8 which equates to 38% chance of relegation. That includes a profit margin for the bookmaker, so one can conclude that the bookies' view is approximately 35% chance of relegation as things stand today
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naa added 13:27 - Oct 25 stupid phone cocked up that reply and I can't be bothered to type it again. Hopefully you got the gist
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Bergholtblue added 15:53 - Oct 25 Sunderland were in this position when Keane took over and got promoted. Place were once rock bottom on Xmas day and then made the play offs. So sorry I can't accept that going down is inevitable, although I struggle to think of 3 clubs that are playing worse than we are at present. Yes, bear in mind that we need a strategy should the worst happen but not plan for it now. Concentrate on keeping up.

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Vic added 15:58 - Oct 25 Very interesting stats in a slightly confusing blog. 2 stats stands out to me in this blog 1) The stated 40% that went down having been bottom three in October 2) the stated 70% who were bottom at the time stage of the season that stayed up! It suggests to me that there's a much greater statistical probability of staying up than going down. Lets plan to stay up then! I suspect that Nik & Andy are probably quite catious by nature and risk averse.

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Lord_Mac added 22:12 - Oct 25 I am suggesting we plan to stay up - going down is hard to recover from. What I'm trying to say is that the principles of preparing for League One are not that different to the principles of organising the side to try and stay up, and so we need a plan to deal with both. I'd be very worried if we carry on with loanees, while by-passing our own players, and playing one upfront at home, etc. 35% chance of going down broadly confirms my figures - I guess the betting company actuaries use similar analyses! It's very easy to quote the instances of clubs escaping from the bottom three, but to forget the teams that didn't manage it. It's a bit like ignoring the risks of smoking because you know a 90-year-old chain smoker who didn't get caught. Sure, it's only two wins to catch up the pack, but when did we last win two games in a row? February, I think. We have won one of our last 12 games and we talk about winning two games in a row - that's a big turnaround. Relegation is a distinct possibility as things stand. Risk averse? No, I'd say risk aware. I (Andy) won't bore you with the details, but I was made redundant in 1999, and gambled my redundancy money in a new business, which happily paid off and I sold it in 2006. Nik has been to 45 countries by the age of 23, including some scary ones. What we have both learned is how to analyse situations and assess risk. Above all, not to ignore risks because they are less than 50%. You have to consider the severity of the outcome and plan accordingly! Anyway, thanks for the time and the comments. Let's hope it now gets sorted out in a way that we are all happy with.

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