Ho Bloody Ho

Christmas is a time for good cheer and good will to all men. If I were Danny Wilson I'd have it circled in the calendar for a very different reason.

Things cannot go on as they are. We are on track to finish mid-way down the most mediocre Division Two I can remember. Something has to change – either the results or the man in charge of getting them. No one man is bigger than Bristol City Football Club (apart from Lee Matthews, but that's a fitness thing).

As I have said before, Danny has been given the time and the money to build his own squad. The result is the one we have now. We have every right to judge him by it. Sure, he's lost Scott Murray but what manager at a club for three years doesn't lose at least one player he'd have liked to have kept? Most managers in this division have suffered far greater hardship. The point is to build a squad that doesn't rely on one man. Danny has had more boardroom support than any Division Two manager that hasn't actually achieved promotion has a right to expect. He's been given a stonking three-year contract renewal, money to go out and buy players and a stream of able youngsters. The Chairman has kept his mouth shut in public and avoided piling any extra pressure on when he has literally millions more reasons to scream out with frustration than the rest of us. And we the fans – perhaps reassured by his ‘big name' reputation when he joined – have for the most part laid off him and remained patient. To be fair, his returns have justified that up until this season.

But in my opinion, even without Murray this is a squad that should be in a top two position. We know the talent the players have from last year. In addition, we have a Premiership player that Middlesbrough fans were up in arms about leaving and one of the highest-rated young strikers in Scotland . Neither have set the world on fire so far. And the players who came within a hair's breadth of automatic promotion last year have for the most part been shadows of their former selves far too often. You have to ask yourself why. They can't all just be off form. Something is wrong.

We've been treated to stubborn and suspect team selection, players who appear poorly motivated at times and tactics that leave you chewing your tongue off with frustration. Wilkshire has spent most of the season out of position, and this fetish for teaming Joe and Tommy up in the middle had left precious little room for the sort of attacking imagination you need to unlock teams, particularly at home. It's all very well if Danny's decisions get results, but so far they haven't. He's changed things around a bit, made a few of the more obvious switches and we've still not got much return. There's only so long you can suggest we were unlucky or that we deserved something out of the game, or that Danny can accuse his players of throwing away a lead with sloppy defending. The truth is that we've dropped too many points against teams we should be beating week in, week out, and we've looked far from promotion material.

Danny's future should depend on his results this season. Or at least it bloody well should do. After years of building and progressing, we have reached a point where promotion is the only result I am willing to accept as satisfactory and I sincerely hope Steve Lansdown feels the same way, three-year deal or no three-year deal.

I am by nature an optimist and I hate writing negative things. But sometimes you just can't ignore what is happening and fool yourself. Hovering somewhere in the top half of mid-table in this division, with the lacklustre opposition we are facing this year, is not an achievement. It is a massive underachievement. It is a bad joke. We cannot afford to waste another year languishing, and if Danny has not shown that he is capable of turning it around and inspiring the players and delivering the present we all expect once the Yuletide fixtures are done and dusted, then it is time to hand the reins over while there is still time to recover the situation.

I don't think that is unfair to Danny or that we'd be jumping the gun. We'll have given him a fair crack at the whip. But at this rate I'll have a long grey beard like Father Christmas before we make the promised land. I am not confident that he has the complete faith of his players any more, that he is able to motivate them or that he can still see the wood for the trees. There is still time for him to show me I am wrong. But it is running out. Someone needs to kick-start these players and this season.

If there is not some good cheer around The Gate by 4.45pm on January 3 after we have played Colchester United at home, then it will be time for Steve Landsown to come up with a New Year resolution of his own – and bring in someone else to play Santa.