NO more belligerent rallying calls, no more hollow vows to fight until the end, the captain of Bolton Wanderers stood embarrassed on the touchline at the iPro Stadium offering no excuses for the team’s failure this season.

Relegation from the Championship has been viewed a mile off but as it was finally confirmed at Derby on Saturday afternoon, emotions were raw.

Darren Pratley, appointed as skipper last summer by Neil Lennon after signing a new three-year contract, has personified the club’s problems.

A perceived high earner struggling for form, the extra responsibility appears to have weighed heavily on the midfielder’s shoulders.

For the first time he admitted off-the-field issues had taken their toll, breaking the well-worn rhetoric that players ignored the High Court hearings, takeover talk and whispers of liquidation.

The Londoner even ventured to suggest those in the boardroom should examine their own role in the club’s downfall.

But performances on the field have fallen woefully short of expectation, and despite months of suggesting otherwise Pratley admitted there was no fight left in the dressing room.

“It has been draining – emotionally, physically, mentally; I have never been in a season like this,” he told The Bolton News.

“Every day there has been something going on.

“Football, in my opinion, is about confidence and if you are losing every week it will drain you. Being captain puts a bit more pressure on me but I think all the boys are tired, it has been a long season on and off the pitch.

“That is not an excuse. We have not been good enough. I am not hiding from that.

“I don’t think we are one of the three worst teams in the league. But I can’t argue with the league table.

“At the moment it seems we’ll finish rock bottom, so we have to take responsibility, but also I think upstairs, all the stuff that has gone on, they need to take some too.”

Pratley said back in January that he would like to stick “two fingers up” at the local press for the criticism that had been aimed at the team during the first half of the season.

He admitted that performances since then had done little to encourage positivity but argued that the problem had been longer-term, shining another spotlight on the boardroom.

“Your paper should be about the football and if you are winning games then you can talk about the players,” he said.

“We can’t kid ourselves and say it’s just been this season. This has been happening for years.

“We have lost experienced players – Tim Ream, Matt Mills – and did we really replace them? I don’t think so. Did the manager get backing? You’d have to ask Neil Lennon that.

“If you lose that many players and just about avoid relegation last year you are kidding yourself if you thought we’d be up there this year.”

Pratley does have sympathy with the Wanderers supporters and insists he is not simply paying lip-service.

“As a player and a captain I have to say I feel sorry for the fans but honestly, deep down inside, I do feel for them,” he said.

“Obviously the fans are going to boo us because we have let them down. They pay their hard-earned cash and they have stood by us.

“Clubs have been relegated in the past and their fans have been waiting outside to boo or spit, or whatever, and ours are there waiting for autographs.

“They deserve a lot of credit this season, they have been through so much, and for them – not us players because we won’t be here forever – the club needs to get it right.

“They need to get their club back. For the last four or five years it has been going downhill and they need to put a stop to it.”