Just as things continue to hot up at one end of the table it appears that the lengthy battle to avoid the automatic relegation spot is all but over. Bray Wanderers, after their third consecutive defeat at the weekend, now require something of a miracle if they are to survive the drop.

Of course, they're no strangers to this sort of thing out at the Carlisle Grounds. With the exception of last season when they managed to finish eighth, they've made a habit of travelling between the divisions in one direction or another.

The reduction in the size of the top flight has, however, made it harder than ever not to feel sorry for clubs like Bray, which have been progressive off the pitch, and at least reasonably competitive on it.

Almost every year under the old system one of the two clubs suffering automatic relegation would have looked hopelessly out of its depth for almost the entirety of the campaign.

Few would be sorry to see them go and the hope would be widely expressed that the following season's promoted sides would manage to bring more to the Premier Division.

Now, with just 10 clubs in the top flight, things are much tighter and the relegation of Wanderers to the first division, assuming it actually does come to pass, will surely do nobody any good.

In recent years, the club has worked hard to forge strong links with underage clubs in its catchment area and its commitment to developing its ground was underlined just before Christmas when it finally received planning permission to proceed with work on new spectator, training and other facilities at the site that will cost anything up to €2 million over the next few years.

Pat Devlin, who continues - as long as it remains a mathematical possibility - to hope Wanderers can avoid the drop, admits that the need to move forward on the redevelopment front probably would have made the current budget for the playing side unsustainable even if the club did manage to stay up.

In the first division, though, the cutbacks may well end up being far more severe, and so what we are likely to see is much of the work on squad strengthening that has been achieved over the past couple of seasons being rapidly undone.

The Wanderers boss has consistently argued for a spell in which perhaps 16 clubs got to play in an expanded Premier Division for a guaranteed period of time in order to allow them to develop in a more secure environment.

Inevitably, he seems more convinced than ever by the idea now that his club looks set to be obliged to take a significant step backwards due to relegation.

The idea of a 16-strong division would be met with horror by the big Dublin clubs that did so much to achieve the present situation, but even now the continued exclusion of huge geographical areas of the country from what is supposed to be a "national" league, as well as a situation in which financial mismanagement appears to look more worth the gamble than ever, surely merits an urgent assessment of what has been achieved by moving from 12 to 10 teams.

Certainly, the extension of the play-off system is another major step in the wrong direction. From the point of view of the first division clubs, it is entirely understandable that they would want the chance of a second promotion spot and desire to keep as many clubs as possible in the running for it until the very end of the season.

But the idea that a club that has finished ninth in a much stronger division over the course of a 27-game campaign must go into what are effectively cup semi-finals with three sides from the lower league to simply hold its own is astonishing.

In Merrion Square, there has traditionally been an insistence that the play-offs were good for the top-flight teams as well, providing an interest for supporters of clubs that might otherwise have been safely mid-table and, it was argued, not worth going out to see.

But it's hard to imagine that, as they assessed their situation during the recent financial meltdown at Drogheda, for example, anybody consoled themselves with the thought that they were at least still in the thick of a relegation battle.

They'll almost certainly be in one again next year, of course, as most likely will Derry and Longford unless they too set aside their overall development as clubs and pour ever more resources into first-team players' wages.

The intention is that the UEFA licensing system will help to regularise the situation and prevent the next Drogheda from happening.

It would be good, though, if the league didn't seem intent sometimes on placing clubs with even the best intentions firmly between a rock and a hard place.

emalone@irish-times.ie