Molly Burke: Thiiiiiiiings can only get... worse?!

I was one of the many brainwashed into believing that it won't be like this forever and that eventually ‘things can only get better’. In hindsight, it’s clear that it was just a way of coping with our club falling apart because nobody wanted to admit that things weren't going to improve.

Over the past few years it's been the same story. We’ve attempted to get rid of the deadwood and bring in new players that would add a bit of excitement to our team, putting in the effort that so few make. The likes of Borini, Rodwell and Januzaj are perfect examples of transfers that got our hopes up, only to later be brought crashing back down to Earth.

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We often convince ourselves that 'this will be the season', that we’ll finally join all those teams that got promoted after us yet find themselves in much better positions. But instead we suffer defeat after defeat for weeks - sometimes months - until yet another underwhelming new manager is put in place of the previous disappointment.

Year after year of this has caused us to finally get what we deserve - a spot in the Championship. While there was nothing positive about our relegation, there was still the possibility that perhaps this would give us the opportunity to rebuild - a work in progress.

Every manager we have had in recent times - eight in eight years, may I add - has fed us the same words to keep us happy. "These things take time". "We will get the club back to where it belongs". And for a while we believe it. We might put on a good performance against an average side and scrape a draw every now and then, but we always end up going back to our losing ways.

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No manager - bar perhaps Sam Allardyce - has managed to pull off the impossible or even improve our side, and have often left the club in a worse state than when they arrived.

Of course the manager is not always to blame, considering they all say the same thing when they leave - our club is rotten to the core, and that is, sadly, very true.

Ellis Short is the only consistent factor in our downhill spiral to the Championship. The one person we rely on for money and enthusiasm to give us fans what we want, and he is unable to provide this.

With Short at the head of our club we will never progress, no matter what we tell ourselves. He clearly doesn't care for the club or the fans and for the remainder of his stay at the Stadium of Light we’ll have to accept mediocrity.

We have been patient and we have supported our club the best we can, but we shouldn't have to be patient anymore. We shouldn't have to sit through this terrible football as we creep closer to a second consecutive relegation. Our fans are brilliant and we don't deserve this.

We can try convince ourselves that this is all a work in progress as much as we like but until something is done about the mess we are in - and have been for some time now - things will never get better.