Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Glenn Hoddle is not yet ready to account for his team's expected failure to qualify for the Championship play-offs.
Mathematically, a third successive season at this level should not be confirmed until Saturday, after Preston North End's match at Leicester City. Or even a day sooner, if Wolves fail to beat Watford in their teatime kick-off on Good Friday.
If Wolves win on Friday there is always the thin hope that Molineux old boy Rob Kelly - once part of the Wolves backroom team - might inspire his Leicester team to do his former employers a favour and keep the dream alive another week.
While even Hoddle says that Wolves have reached the stage where his side require a miracle, he adds that it is too soon to start any inquest on what went wrong.
"We won't start the postmortem on the season while there's still games to be played," Hoddle said. "We did enough to win on Saturday, but it didn't happen for us."
It has not helped Wolves' cause that so many of his players, not to mention the Wolves manager himself, face an uncertain future. Skipper Paul Ince, vice captain Mark Kennedy, Vio Ganea, Colin Cameron, George Ndah, Darren Anderton and forgotten man Silas are on contracts which end on June 30.
Although Ince has hinted at another season, a major factor in the length of Wolves' 'retained list' being governed by a comparative down-sizing following the end of their two-year Premiership parachute payments.
Chief executive Jez Moxey has placed a question mark over the future of Wolves' arguably major asset, Birmingham-born Joleon Lescott, by warning that senior players may have to be sold to help balance the books.
The presence of Aston Villa manager David O'Leary and his No 2 Roy Aitken at Molineux last Saturday was duly noted.
Ganea looks likely to go, after the unhappy Romanian striker made it clear that he was not keen to continue playing under Hoddle.
Relations are strained following a training ground bust-up with a Wolves teammate that earned Ganea a club fine. Unless there is a change in management at Molineux, he will move, with Saturday's opponents Coventry City or his old boss Dave Jones' Cardiff City heading the queue.
"If the present manager leaves and I get to sign an advantageous deal, then I may stay at Wolves," he said. "I've had offers from Cardiff and Coventry and I would like to work with Jones again. But Cardiff have offered me only a one-year contract while Coventry have offered two years."
As for Cameron, the 33-year-old former Scotland international midfielder appears to have four games left to earn another contract. Recalled from loan at Millwall last week, the fans' favourite brought the house down by scoring on his return to Molineux.
He says: "I just want games. And hopefully I will play for the rest of the season.
"That's why I went down to Millwall in the first place as I wasn't getting a game here.
"But the manager pulled me in on Thursday to say he might have to call me back and the fans' response was fantastic.
"It's great to know they have those sort of feelings about me and it gave me a lift. They were singing my name from the start and they let me know I had their full backing."
