Crewe Alex: Buck must stop with Holland

WHAT a fine mess Steve Holland has got us into ... we have now lost to the lowest of the low.

Defeats against Hereford and now Yeovil have shown us up for what we are, a poorly coached side with players consistently under performing.

To be bottom after 12 games is, to be frank, totally unacceptable and I can see no signs of improvement on the horizon.

The excuses are getting feebler by the game and if we carry on at this rate we will be cast adrift way before the halfway point in the season.

The players must take a certain amount of flack, but when push comes to shove the buck stops with our ailing coach. It is his responsibility to sort this out, but it is hard to imagine him turning this around.

We have listened to the club propaganda machine, how the embarrassing last-day defeat to Oldham was going to be the wake-up call and a club plea to give the team 10 games to see a clearer picture of how things will pan out.

Well we have had 12 games now and despite spending decent sums of money on player recruitment compared to the teams in the bottom six, we are woefully out of our depth.

There are a growing number of disgruntled fans who want wholesale changes at the football club, but those calls appear to be falling on deaf ears as the club's hierarchy continue to plod along operating a 'business as usual' attitude.

The "Holland Out" protest which took place during the draw against MK Dons was respectful and organised in a dignified manner and the first-team coach acknowledged that he can understand the criticism coming from the crowd.

His response was commendable, nothing less than what we have come to expect from Steve Holland, whose heart is in the right place. However, things are just not happening for him and it's hard to pinpoint one area of weakness.

A Tuesday night at Yeovil was an ideal opportunity to get a win on the board, but we bottled it. We can't expect to give the home side a two-goal lead and still take anything from the game.

Losing is becoming a habit and when we concede it's unlikely we will take anything from the game. Yet again I felt Holland fluffed his lines – and that is happening all too often.

After conceding a poor first, changes should have been made at half-time, but Holland waited until we gifted Yeovil a second goal before making the changes which were responsible for providing an unlikely renaissance.

Who knows what would have happened if he had acted sooner. It seems as if he just reacted to events on the pitch instead of being pro-active. That said, the changes worked and when we got back to 2-2 I thought we might go on and win it.

The small travelling army willed the Alex to attack, attack, attack as Yeovil looked just as woeful as us at defending, but Holland seemed content to try to hold what we had. What a mistake to make.

Danny Woodards made an error and Darren Way's shot hit the post before rolling agonisingly across the line and in off the other post. A tad unfortunate perhaps, but in my opinion poor management cost us this game.

It's painful stuff at the moment and the fans feel powerless to stop the general malaise which is sweeping through the football club and the fact nobody seems to be taking responsibility for the mess is turning the atmosphere sour.

The majority of Crewe fans are extremely loyal and going into every game willing the team to win. They don't go to the game looking to get after the players and management, but fans aren't daft. They can see that they are being short-changed in every game and that hurts.

I really can't see where the next win is coming from and that is a worry. If we get beat at Tranmere on Friday night then it will be interesting to see what the atmosphere will be like at Tuesday's home match against Peterborough.