Villa 1 Newcastle 0

Aston Villa 1 Newcastle United 0

So we ended up finishing 6th and playing fairly well I thought. Clearly everyone's focus was on the opposition and for me, having big Sunderland & some Hull roots in my family tree, I was quite happy to see them go down. My Grandad was Sunderland born and bred - I was proud to see a match at Roker Park with him when, unfortunately for him that day, Villa won 4-1 and sent them down. He would have loved yesterday seeing Villa return the favour and giving Sunderland the chance to be the only North-East team in the Premier League.

Don't believe the SKY myth everyone, Newcastle United are not a big club, what they are is a well-supported club and have been for some time. There is a big difference. I thought I'd be delighted at seeing Shearer (who was hated as a player at Villa Park) and co. drop down but actually felt strangely apathetic - much like their squad of players.

Newcastle's players were so bad, especially in the second half, it was almost as if they didn't have the will, urgency or desire to get back in the game. Some of the shots of Michael Owen I saw later make him look completely unfazed by what is happening. Maybe that's modern day footballers for you - most of them will jump ship and leave the mess they made behind them.

The performance highlighted the areas where we need to strengthen, defence and midfield especially, though I'm beginning to think that breaking the top four monotony is not going to happen anyway, certainly not for us - Maybe Man City with their billions, but not us. Sixth for me would have been acceptable at the start of the season but to be so strong just 3 months back and to completely capitulate was obviously disappointing.

The CSKA Moscow fiasco left a sour taste, especially from a manager who I really like and hope stays for many a year, and proved resting players made no difference whatsoever - those "rested" couldn't see out 92 minutes at home to Stoke City with a two goal lead and I feel our season ended right there.

The UEFA Cup/Europa League beckons again - countless games by the sound of it if you're keen on winning the trophy - what it will mean is another European trip somewhere later this year for me, hopefully somewhere exciting and hopefully as good as the trip to Slavia Prague was late last year. Congratulations to Slavia by the way who are Champions again having wrapped up another Gambrinus liga title with a game to spare.

This season saw Daniel see his first Villa game - today, just for a short while he wanted "to be John Carew" playing football in the back garden! It saw near neighbours West Brom go down but two more local rivals come back up. It also see's another famous old club, Burley, back in the top flight after beating Sheffield United at Wembley - I had many Burnley friends from years gone by and was "on't Turf" the night they only beat Torquay 1-0 and lost in the play-off Semi Final when a Blackburn fan hired a plane with a message for all to see - it read "Staying Down 4Eever - Love Rovers".

Michael Duff or "Duffer" as he was known at Cheltenham scored a header against Yeovil Town at Whaddon Road just over 10 years ago which put Cheltenham Town into the Football League for the first time in 107 years! Now he's part of a Burnley side in the Premier League - after seeing Duffer play against many, many non-league teams, I can't wait to see him up against Torres, Ronaldo, Anelka, Adebayor and Carew!!

Welcome back Burnley!

This season has come and gone - and we're all another year older!