[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Singing in the rain: Albion fans at the Vetch Field for the playoffs, 16th May 1993.

And so another season winds to its tortuous, torturous and frankly welcome conclusion in South Wales on Sunday. There's been little joy to take from it since the Arsenal win two very long months ago, and in all honesty, it lost a lot of its meaning and enjoyment value way back on the seventh of January when Albion limped to an all-too-predictable third-round defeat against Derby in the cup. I can't fault the achievement of having achieved safety so early in the season - two or three years ago we'd have taken this kind of stability gladly - but the failure to push on and do anything more in the months since, as well as two pathetic cup exits, means the overall verdict has to be a cry of "where's the improvement?"

We have one last chance of regaining 8th place (or at least not throwing away a top-half finish altogether) as we face Swansea on their turf, which is usually an awful hunting-ground for us. They're unbeaten in four and have won two back-to-back; whether safety will make them complacent I don't know, but the fact is that they have more momentum than we do, and will be cheered on by a home crowd buoyed by their escape act. It's a tough, tough ask. I can only hope - as I've hoped for the last two months - that Albion have an answer to it somewhere, somehow.