THE hard work starts here for Owen Coyle, and I don’t just mean in rebuilding his squad.

Whatever long term plan he is working to, what happened last weekend would have hurt him.

Knowing him as I do, I know he’ll bounce back and maybe even stronger for the experience, but he’ll be the first to admit that his stock has taken a hit because he now has a relegation on his CV.

This time last year people were saying he could take over at Liverpool or Aston Villa – now it’s a case of back to the drawing board.

It’s going to take a fair bit of PR work this summer to get things right again between the fans and the club. Right now I can understand that people are gutted, but I can’t see a situation like we had with Gary Megson where things lingered all summer and then spilled into the next season.

People can see what has happened off the park – and I hope that we can all try to put this behind us now.

Unless we go into next season with a positive frame of mind, we could damage our chances of bouncing straight back.

I remember when it happened under Colin Todd. We were so eager to put things right that we made a flying start and made it look easy from the first whistle.

I’m not saying it will be easy, but if you get the attitude right, it could be.

The teams that come down from the Premier League are always the ones to beat. They are marked men.

And though that does bring a bit of pressure, you also know that you demand respect. If you use that in the right way, and the players think “I’m going to prove I should be playing up there and not here”, then results will come and that relationship will be repaired again.

Relegation hurts – but it doesn’t need to be the end of the road.

There is no time for us to mope

NIGEL Reo-Coker’s decision to turn his back on us leaves the club with a massive hole to fill next season.

I’m absolutely positive that Owen would have wanted to keep him in the Championship because in a terrible season he has been one of the few who has stood up to be counted.

He took on the captain’s armband, looked a natural leader, and was pretty consistent in a midfield that struggled to cope at times because of the players who were sat on the sidelines.

But can I understand his decision? Of course.

The same goes for Jussi Jaaskelainen and Martin Petrov. This is a short, short career and if you get a chance to play at the top for a couple more years then you take it.

Jussi has been a brilliant servant to this club and you can have no complaints if someone has offered him a chance next season with more first team football.

Adam Bogdan has shown he’s a number one and Jussi hasn’t played for half a year. At his age, you want to squeeze every last appearance out of your career that you can, and with Sam Allardyce looking like he’ll be leading West Ham up it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that’s where he ends up.

It’s great saying you are starting afresh and trimming the wage bill by such an extent but you have to worry that next season we might not have the experience we need.

Owen must get a few in who know the division, can handle the extra workload and have the right attitude, because getting promotion from the Championship is as much a test of your head as it is your body.

The games are quicker, more brutal and more often than not you are playing twice a week.

I was watching one of the play-offs this week and heard one lad had played 60 games. We need players who can handle that because the sad fact is, for the last few seasons we’ve picked up too many injuries and that’s something we can ill-afford next season.

I hope the refs do a better job down a tier

THERE are a lot of things I’ll miss about the Premier League, but the referees aren’t one of them.

Chris Foy kept up the general standard right to the last at the Britannia Stadium and though I won’t make an excuse and say that’s why we find ourselves in the Championship, it certainly didn’t help.

Stoke’s first goal was a joke. How the heck it hasn’t been given as a foul I’ll never know because you’d have been lucky to get away with that in the football they play over here in the USA.

The penalty was another bad decision but at least you can understand how it has been given.

The referee might not have had a good angle – but again, you’d like to think he’d get a bit of help from his assistant.

When things go against you, they really go against you and I’m still waiting for things to even themselves out, as people always like to claim.

At this level, you should not be getting decisions like that wrong. At least not if you claim to be a Premier League ref.

It’s payback time for supporters

ALL that’s left for me to do is thank everyone for reading my column in The Bolton News and to wish you all the best for the summer.

It’s been a disappointing season, but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere today, we can’t afford to sit around and mope.

If we don’t have the right attitude next year then we could end up like Middlesbrough, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich, Leicester or a handful of others who just lost their way and ended up stranded outside the Premier League.

The fans couldn’t do any more to keep us up this season, so for the players, next season is a time to pay them back.

From our point of view, let’s lick our wounds for a few weeks, then go again.

I’m sure you won’t let me down.