'What a waste of a season'

We've achieved nothing, have gone backwards rather than forwards and are no closer to finding the grit we need to try and compete at this level. I feel a real level of confusion as to what our overall strategy was. If Parker was sacked because his primary objective was survival, then that means avoiding relegation was fundamental.

Which, in turn, suggests the club should have done everything they could to avoid that happening, including sacking a desperately under-performing manager when it could have made a difference and achieved that very goal! Perhaps it was financial - do we have to pay less in compensation if he didn't achieve survival? Whatever the justification, every decision in this process has just felt so very odd.

Parker has left with the dignity you'd expect from a man of his grace. Conversations like this are horrible on a human level - it's never nice to publicly scrutinise someone on a global stage and advocate for their employment to come to an end. But the reality is Parker is not yet at a stage where he can effectively manage at Premier League level and Burnley simply don't have the luxury of allowing someone to learn on the job.

We need to get back to mounting a realistic campaign for survival. Who do we get now? Craig Bellamy and Steven Gerrard are early candidates being named in the media.