WE have peaked and troughed this season. We have been too inconsistent. And that’s why it’s hard to say, on the field, we have progressed.

It’s hard to judge completely as there are different teams above us but I still think we should have done better than finish ninth.

We just don’t seem to have got the right balance yet.

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There have been times when we have sat back and counter-attacked when we should have got at teams.

There is nothing wrong with counter-attacking when you are the away team, but we’ve done it at times at home too, and sometimes it has backfired on us.

There is no doubt we have quality in the side.

We showed that in beating two Premier League teams in the FA Cup as well as running another, Liverpool, very close.

And on Saturday we showed we can match it with the best in the Championship by beating Ipswich.

So it leads you to think, why have the players not been able to get themselves up for the smaller games? The games that we have dropped too many points in.

But however we play, we always know we’ve got goals in us. Maybe not as many as we would have liked in all areas of the pitch, but we have still finished the season with two strikers scoring 20 goals plus each.

That, however, has not brought us success.

I compare it to window wipers.

You attack together and you defend together. And I do think at times we attack as individuals and defend as individuals and when that happens, it doesn’t work.

If your windscreen wipers are not working you take them into the garage and get the lads to fix them.

And we do need a bit of fixing because we have played like broken windscreen wipers at times.

One will work and we’ll score goals and win games, but then the other won’t and we’ll concede and drop points.

That’s why we finished where we did in the table. The table doesn’t lie.

We had a decent season last season, but 12 months on we’ve finished one place further down the standings and three points worse off. So that’s why I say, apart from a really good run in the FA Cup, it’s hard to argue that we have progressed.

Unfortunately we’ve got to realise, for the time being at least, we’re not a Premier League side any more.

After three seasons, you have to say we are now very much a Championship side.

We punched above our weight for a number of years while we were in top flight.

To get back there we’re going to have to punch even harder.