S ince taking over at Gloucester Rugby four years ago, Dean Ryan has stuck fairly rigidly through the bleak winter months to a "judge us in May" mantra.

When the grounds were boggy and the testing conditions would throw up the occasional anomaly of a result, the Kingsholm head coach would point to his team's strong position in the Guinness Premiership and set the end of the regular season as the time to acclaim success or failure.

The most damning assessment of Gloucester's 2008-09 campaign is that it is not even likely to stretch as far as May.

After holding their own Premiership destiny in their hands for 21 matches, Gloucester head to Adams Park to play Wasps tomorrow with all control removed from their possession.

They will take on the soon-to-be-dethroned yet recently revitalised champions without a host of their injured frontline talent – and they will have to win, win well, and then hope results elsewhere go their way. And that is just to reach the play-offs and prolong their season by a fortnight.

Even if they do somehow finish inside the Premiership's top four, at the expense of Harlequins, London Irish or – wouldn't they just love it – Bath, Ryan's men will then more than likely face a trip to Leicester, who have won eight of their last nine matches and 13 in a row at home. Even Shane Warne would struggle to spin the situation Gloucester find themselves in after a tortuous week.

Ryan, to his credit, was in no mood to spin after his side's 50-12 demolition at the hands of Cardiff Blues at Twickenham six days ago. How could he have tried to put any kind of gloss on a performance so lifeless and embarrassing?

Instead he promised change. Not just the kind of patch-up, tweak here, tweak there change Gloucester have dealt in over the past few years, but a proper overhaul.

With Carlos Nieto bound for Saracens, Gareth Cooper going to Cardiff, Olly Barkley on his way to Bath, Ryan Lamb heading to London Irish, Anthony Allen ready to join Leicester, a pair of bright young backs moving to Bristol and several other players uncertain about their futures, there is no doubt change will come.

But two questions remain unanswered. Will Ryan be allowed the implement those changes himself? And who will plug the gaps left by a group of players who, while they may have failed to function collectively at the highest level of club rugby, are undeniably blessed with talent? The only man who appears to know the answers to those questions is Tom Walkinshaw, the Gloucester chairman, who is conveniently on business in Australia.

Ryan spoke at length after his side's EDF Energy Cup humiliation and answered several tough questions about the failings of his expensively assembled team.

He took a degree of responsibility for his side's repeated inability to win the big games – Munster in the Heineken Cup, Cardiff in the Heineken Cup and the EDF, Leicester in the Premiership play-offs – but only by stating he had stuck with certain players for too long.

"If there's something I've done wrong in the past, it's probably that I've stayed with individuals hoping they'd improve when there have been opportunities to change earlier," he said.

Many Gloucester supporters appear to disagree with Ryan when he says that is the only mistake he has made over the course of his tenure. Tuesday's limp 13-6 home Premiership defeat to Worcester – in which on-loan Gloucester fly-half Willie Walker, for the second time in a month, scored the decisive points against his parent club – prompted an angry reaction from many Kingsholm regulars.

Their frustration is completely understandable, particularly as their Premiership title hopes were all but ended by a man who belongs to Gloucester and has a year to run on his Kingsholm contract. As one seasoned Shedhead told me this week: "Dean Ryan said on Saturday that our players are not good enough – and yet we have let Worcester borrow a bloke who has kicked us out of the play-offs. How does that make sense?"

It doesn't. And nor does Gloucester's repeated failure at the top level of competition.

Gareth Delve, Gloucester's admirable back-row forward and stand-in captain, admitted the players had let their supporters down after Saturday's Anglo-Welsh mismatch. It was a typically honest statement from a man who has won countless admirers for his attitude, both on and off the field.

And while the Shed faithful do not expect Ryan to follow the example of German football team Energie Cottbus, who felt so embarrassed by their 4-0 drubbing at Schalke last weekend that they refunded the cost of the tickets for each of the 600 supporters who made the 760-mile round trip, the least they are waiting for is an admission that more than one mistake has been made in the last four years.