IF the lads thought they got some rough treatment from Nigel Reo-Coker after the Swansea game, they’d better be thankful Gerry Taggart wasn’t in that dressing room.

Back in his prime at the Reebok, he wouldn’t be averse to grabbing someone by the throat and letting them know exactly why they had let the team down. No-one got away with anything when he was around.

I’d like to say well done to Nigel, because someone has got to hold certain players accountable.

Owen will certainly have said his piece, but sometimes it needs one of the older heads to rattle a few cages, knock a few heads together and provoke a response. The manager is asking for leaders and it’s time a few more stepped up.

When you are playing in a team, you can’t fool anyone. If you are not playing well, and it happens, then you should be giving 100 per cent to try and compensate. If you are not doing that, then you are going to be quickly found out.

Nigel has obviously called a few players out and now we’ll be looking for the reaction against Stoke.

I remember after we were beaten 6-0 by Manchester United at Burden Park that some of the older players, myself included, felt we needed to send out a statement.

Fans don’t pay their money to see their team not giving it everything they can - and I think there are a couple in that dressing room who will have taken the words to heart. Or at least I hope there is.

Owen knows the players are behind him. And like him, I think things will turn.

We’ve got a squad that is capable of much, much more but the longer this goes on, the harder it is to get out of.

Too many wrote off some of the games at the start of the season. We looked past them, and thought “once these are out of the way, we’ll pick straight back up and be brilliant again.”

But some of the performances were embarrassing and they cut a lot deeper than some people realised.

Now the players are fragile, the supporters are fragile, and hopefully Nigel’s little rant has shaken a few players out of their slumber.

How many times have we said a team is “too good to go down?” West Ham springs to mind.

But the simple fact is that we’ve got to turn it round before Christmas, because we don’t want to be in the same boat.

THERE’S two sides to every story - and that’s definitely been the case for our poor start to the season.

In all honesty, we have been struggling to defend down both flanks, and teams have picked it out as a weakness for some time.

It’s not the only problem. We haven’t defended a lot of the crosses that have come in, and we’re still not scoring enough goals, but at right-back and left-back we have been weak.

We haven’t had much luck, with Tyrone Mears, Marcos Alonso and now Dedryck Boyata out injured. And it would be nice to see something bounce our way.

Marcos got 90 minutes for reserves the other night, which was good to see, but I see him as more of an attacking full-back and not necessarily what we need at the moment.

Ricardo Gardner will be disappointed with what he did to get sent off at Swansea; he’s experienced enough to know better.

But unless Owen springs a real surprise, that means Paul Robinson gets his opportunity again after being dropped on Saturday. I hope he takes it.

YOU might think by Owen Coyle’s positive personality that the situation we’re in isn’t affecting him, but you’d be wrong.

He will have been smarting after the Swansea game, but I’ll bet he was the first into training on Monday morning looking to put it right.

I’ve been in his company when he is down, but he doesn’t show it publicly. You won’t change that about him, and however bad things get, he’ll keep trying to motivate his players and his staff to change things for the better.

Sandy Stewart and Steve Davis will know he’s hurting but he’s the public face of this football club, the focal point, so he needs to stay strong.

I said my piece last week. He’s the man to turn this round.

DAVID Wheater’s no airs and graces approach might be just what we need at the moment.

He’s an old fashioned centre-half - the win-it-and-give-it type - and his performances since getting back in the team have been really good.

David is a scrapper and that’s a quality we’ll need to find against Stoke.

It sounds funny, but a 0-0 draw would feel like a victory on Sunday because it can finally lay the run of defeats to rest and mean the statistics can finally stop being trolled out.

It’s great winning games with flowing football - but we need points on the board right now.

STOKE City are in the middle of a marathon at the moment, and I hope we can cash in.

They travel some 2,300 miles to play Maccabi Tel Aviv in Europe before coming to the Reebok on Sunday and will have played seven games in 21 days after the final whistle.

It might be a good time to play them, and it’s also encouraging to hear that Ryan Shawcross won’t figure after getting injured against Newcastle the other night.

They are a strong squad but with that kind of workload, any club would struggle.