In the league we continued our tough trio of fixtures, facing Man City, and grabbing a win through Jenssen's goal. Again we had dominated the match but it had looked like we'd only get a point until Jenssen's late winner brought a needed confidence boost. We then managed a hard earned draw against bogey side Arsenal.
Morale suitably boosted we headed to Anfield and defied the odds to triumph 3-2 in a thriller. Tadic, who had under-performed overall, had an absolute blinder and scored two to cap a great performance.
With 3 great results against quality sides, we headed to West Ham full of confidence, and continued our Jekyll and Hyde season by losing 1-0.
We followed up by crashing out of the FACup at QPR 4-1. It was one of the worst displays I have seen from my team.
I read them the riot act and we headed next to Elland Rd against bottom of the table QPR, and won 7-0. Adelmilson got a hat-trick, Straqualursi got 2 , Kakuta (on his return from injury) and Johnson got the others.
January finished with a 2-0 victory over Southampton (Adelmilson and Kakuta) and I really hoped this was the start of the strong run we needed to propel us into the top 5.
Instead February was dire. We started with a 5-0 loss at Liverpool in the league and followed it up with a 0-0 at Cardiff. Our European qualification ambitions were hanging by a thread. Meanwhile in this year's Europa League we had drawn Celtic in the 1st knock-out round. A very winnable tie on paper, but I was taking nothing for granted. The boys rose to the challenge and in the away leg we triumphed 5-1 (Straqualuri got 2, as did Ryan Bennett with Traore getting the 5th)
As we were out of the FA Cup the home leg was next and we gave a professional performance with Aboubakar grabbing the only goal of the game. We were through 6-1 on aggregate.
Back in the league and we extended our winless streak to 4 with a 1-1 draw at Birmingham (Adelmilson) and a 2-2 at home to QPR (Adelmilson and Jonathan). Both games we should have won easily. Something was very wrong but I couldn't work out how to fix it.
Of course these things are relative, we were into the last 16 in the Europa, and we were comfortably top half in the premier League, and very fiscally secure, so the board were happy, but I knew with the players that we had, that we were under-performing in the league.
The Europa league last 16 saw us drawn against CSKA Moscow who we had faced twice in the group stage, winning one and losing one, so I knew it would be tight. In Moscow we went 2-0 up, but were pegged back to a still commendable 2-2 draw. Adelmilson and Boudebouz got our goals.
A must win game against 5th place Tottenham yielded a 2-1 win with goals from Gourcuff and Cardozo keeping our slender hopes alive.
Then it was the home leg of our Europa League tie and after the disaster of conceeding in the first minute, we rallied and triumphed 2-1 with Straqualursi and Tadic nabbing the goals that took us into the quarter finals.
As March drew towards a close, a 1-0 win over West Brom kept our hopes just about alive before a brave 5-4 loss to might Man City killed our hopes for good. Having somehow battled back from 4-2 down, we just couldn't hang on to the precious point. A brace for Cardozo and goals for Ribery and Strqualursi comprised our four goals.
In the quarter finals of the Europa League we drew the mighty Athletico Madrid. The away leg effectively finished our chances, as we lost 4-1 with Straqualursi getting our only goal.
We then sank further down the league table when we lost 3-1 at Stoke (Lampard).
Our Europa league adventure ended with a pride restoring 3-2 win over Athletico in the home leg (Adelmilson, Johnson, Kakuta) losing 6-4 on aggregate.
Having tried out a ridiculously adventurous 3 striker formation against Sunderland, coming away lucky to escape with a 3-3 draw, I reverted to my 3 across central midfield for the run-in to the end of the season, determined to move up from the 10th place we found ourselves in. I hadn't used this formation since the first month of the season, and it caught our opponents on the hop. Wigan fell 2-0 (Jenssen and Straqualursi), Swansea 3-2 (Bennett, Adelmilson and Kakuta) and April ended with a 3-1 win over Villa, courtesy of a Cardozo hattrick.
For the last two games of the season, I blooded some youngsters and fringe players. Against Chelsea, Doumbia was on fire as we demolished them 4-0.
The final meaningless rubber against Wolves saw us lose 3-0.
So another season was over. Reaching the quarter finals of the Europa League was undoubtedly the highpoint, and although the board were more than happy with 7th, for me the lowpoint was failing to finish higher up the table given the players we had.
As always, there was always next year to look forward to.
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