We finished on 23 last time out and only by picking up a few results late on when we were long relegated mathematically. If we can beat that then it's marginally less depressing and makes it look like we've had a go. Not finishing bottom would also make things slightly more palatable.
Losing feels a bit different this time around because when we lose, we're getting thrashed rather than losing by ones and twos. Even when we were at our absolute worst under Wilder, there were only a handful of occasions where we were royally hammered but the fact we failed to score in over half our games that season meant that the opposition didn't need to score more than one to feel pretty safe about the result.
It's not the defeat, it's the manner of defeat. Too many late goals and players who stand about feeling sorry for themselves and chucking the towel in like they did against Newcastle and at the weekend. Losing to Man United like we did is one that's easier to take - the lads had a good go and were unlucky. Losing 1-0 to Palace with a team we'd have thought would get us relegated from the Championship never mind the Premier League as another example.
If we'd hung on to beat Spurs who at that point were the next big thing, fortunes could have been so much different but that was the big turning point where heads dropped and then got compounded by the 8-0 shitshow and we are where we are.
The Wolves result should have been the catalyst for getting the season up and running but losing like that to a key relegation rival shows the players and the coaching staff up for what they are - not up to the job. We might pick up the odd result, cup tie style but week to week, we just don't have enough skill, intelligence, concentration, discipline, creativity or will to win.
The signings we've made haven't improved the squad - other than Archer and Hamer, there's nobody who is an automatic starter or we'd be excited about signing. Same issue as we've had under Wilder where we can't seem to sign people who consign players like Norwood, Egan, Robinson and various others to the dustbin because we either just don't recruit well enough, can't afford to sign the finished article and end up signing a load of cheap, random foreigners in the the hope that we can find a wedding ring whilst digging around in the dogshit.