I'VE been giving it some serious thought this past week and I'm not sure which is worse; becoming disillusioned about the current running of the club or being fed up of the number of supporters who have come up to me to tell me that!

We are clearly stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Manager Steve Cotterill is wisely refusing to fritter his hard-earned transfer kitty on temporary loan signings now that the play-offs are a practical improbability.

But that conversely just adds to the growing uneasiness at seeing the current squad struggle to string together any consistency.

In an ideal world, the chairman would have speculated ahead of Ade Akinbiyi's sale, allowing the manager to splash out on one or two targets that may well have kept the season alive.

Alas, Barry Kilby has already had his fingers burned once following the collapse of that TV deal.

Once bitten, twice shy. But I do fear that is what is holding this great club of ours back.

Remember the time we sat proudly at the top of the Championship, a year after promotion?

It was a similar tragedy back then. I remember Stan Ternent saying that if he'd been allowed to strengthen the squad at Christmas, he would almost certainly guarantee promotion.

Everybody was optimistic no, confident it would happen.

Alas, the money stayed locked in a vault and we duly missed out on the play-offs by one bleeding goal.

Fast forward and again we now seem reluctant to speculate when the mind-blowing rewards far outstrip the investment.

Transfer fees are, of course, now limited to twice a year, which hardly helps if you are a mid-table team unlikely to trouble either business end of the table.

But it's not just transfers. I've said it before, but players only go where the money is.

Burnley, we are regularly told by the chairman, have one of the lowest wage bills in the Championship.

The connection, I believe, is there for all to see.