STINGING from the pain of relegation and bruised from the rigours of battle, Kevin Davies admitted he was still expecting to wake up from Wanderers’ relegation nightmare.

The skipper pulled no punches in his assessment of a campaign that may have seen more than its fair share of bad luck, but also a succession of missed opportunities and poor performances.

Davies will be part of the squad that attempts to bounce straight back up from the Championship next season after agreeing a new deal, but next season is not something the striker currently wants to contemplate with the wounds still so fresh.

“Over 38 games we’re in the bottom three and you have to take responsibility for that as a team,” he said after a 2-2 draw at the Britannia Stadium that was not enough to prevent Wanderers from dropping out of the Premier League for the first time in 11 years.

“It’s difficult to take right now and you just want to go and bury your head somewhere. It will be that way for weeks.

“But there will be a time to reflect and by pre-season the club will have made a decision on a number of players, so hopefully we can rebuild and get a squad that’s good enough to bounce straight back.

“We won’t make excuses because we were in a position to win this game and looked comfortable, but we haven’t managed to do it. It was the same last week when we should have closed it out.

“I never thought this day would come. I always believed we’d do enough to save ourselves.

“Everyone will accept that responsibility – from the manager through to every player in the squad because at the end of the day we haven’t been good enough to stay up.”

Wanderers went into the game almost expecting Manchester City to live up to their end of the bargain and beat QPR at the Etihad Stadium. But for long spells of the game, the uncertainty over that result seemed to bleed into the Whites’ performance.

At full-time, City were still level pegging but as Davies and the players picked themselves up off the turf to head back down the dressing room, it became apparent that Sergio Aguero had scored a goal to capture the title.

“That was horrible to hear,” Davies added.

“It was hard because at 2-1 we were winning but we knew what situation we were in by the rumblings around the ground.

“When we came off, it hurts even more knowing that City won.

“But we threw points away last week and we’ve thrown them away here.

“It could have been so different.”