[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

The team at least gave us a gutsy performance to go out on, and in the circumstances that's all we could ask. In my heart of hearts I can't blame Brunty for the daft second-yellow challenge: he was probably the one bloke out there who knew exactly what this derby means to all of us (he's said in the past that he sends his kids to a Birmingham school and gets stick on the morning run from Villa parents), and it was pure adrenaline and passion.

As for the mighty Witton... well, with a full-strength squad and a twelve-game unbeaten streak behind them, they finally managed to scrape by in a shootout where three of our takers were defenders and the other two midfielders, after 210 minutes of football - 41 of them against ten men - with half of our key players injured or suspended, having been all but rudderless for months. They should have taken us to the cleaners in these two games. They bottled it big-time. And unless they buck their ideas up, Wembley is going to be a massive dose of footballing reality for the second year in a row...