Right then. A few #avfc things. I wrote an article in September about how Villa were undoing all their good work early in the season by being too open. That mistakes were coming because we were asking players to do too much. That was the fatal flaw in our season.....

To win, we basically had to be exceptional (or the opposition terrible). I can only think of Norwich at home where we won & neither of those things happened. Maybe Smith had too much faith that we’d come good. Maybe he had too much to do to integrate all those players.... #avfc

Or maybe in the thick of a PL season it’s really, really hard to do. I suspect the answer is somewhere between the three. But correct it we did - twice. I think he made the decision to go three at the back earlier than we did it, but had to wait for Mings to be fit. #avfc

Smith said as much, that he needed him to martial the back line. Then the injuries changed it all again. But he got it right again a second time. Lacking goals, we had to tighten up. And my god we did it. I’ll say this again - in the final 270 mins of football, we conceded...

...2 shots on target. 1 took a huge deflection. They both went in, which is mad. When we were all worried about the meek defeats, he stuck at it. And he proved himself right. That’s top coaching. Looked at the flaws, and drilled the team into the only way we could survive. #avfc

He was probably too slow to adapt. I’m no expert & I could see what the problems were - oceans of space between our players. But he had a massive job to integrate all those players at this level. And he did it. He’s earned our trust. Absolutely no doubt. #avfc

Recruitment will be the next thing. It was a million miles from flawless. But at an average of £9.5m per player, it’s never going to be perfect. I think it’s mad not to acknowledge that. It needs to be better now if we are to improve. #avfc

But it’s a totally different issue now. We need to improve a team, not build an entirely new one. The foundations now exist - for the first time in a long time. For that I think that recruitment group also deserve a chance to get it right. #avfc

One last thing - it’s important to acknowledge that mistakes were made without wanting everyone to be sacked. It was a hugely difficult task this last 13 months. No-one escapes blame. But you should judge people on the parameters that they are working in. #avfc

I’ll be a much tougher critic next season. We should be looking at a better team and a decent sized points improvement - I’d say 12 more points should be the aim now. But we’ve built what is just about a Premier League team. Now they need to build a good one. #avfc

I’ll do the players later. UTV. #avfc