FOLLOWING a decent display at Hull City, Saturday’s performance in a 3-1 defeat at home to Huddersfield was a timely reminder that O’Driscoll will have his work cut out this summer.

The cynic in me thinks that the players only turned it on for the Hull game because it was live on Sky TV and therefore a ‘shop window’ of sorts. There is simply no doubting their effort and commitment levels were much higher in that game than on Saturday.

In truth, it is these inconsistent performances that have cost us our place in The Championship and unfortunately my faith in this group of players to get us back up next season is virtually non-existent.

O’Driscoll will need to try and move on many of the Old Guard; however this will be far from straight forward given high wages and the quality of players.

Hamstrung with these inconsistent players, it will be difficult to bring in any real quality given the money we are likely to have to spend on wages with Financial Fair Play regulations being applicable.

As is always the way, O’Driscoll will struggle to keep the players he wants to as they will attract interest from Championship clubs and struggle to get rid of the players he wants to.

All this points to fans having to take a long-term view of O’Driscoll’s time at the club, especially when you consider other ongoing improvements being made to the youth-system, the under-21 development squad and the scouting network.

He has a massive job on his hands to overhaul the way the club is run on the playing side, and he is going to have to be given sufficient time to sort the mess out that we find ourselves in. Significant changes that he and the club are proposing do not happen overnight.

Our final game of the season is this Saturday (12.45pm) with a trip to Charlton Athletic. They are a good example of a club that got relegated from The Championship and managed to completely rebuild their team in the summer before being promoted back, as champions, the very next season. City would do well to look at exactly how they managed to do this, and with a rookie manager in Chris Powell as well.

Do you agree with Will’s views? Have your say below.