Swansea City in the Promised Land

Though it galls me to say it, congratulations to Swansea City, who this afternoon grabbed the final Premiership place up for grabs in the 2011/12 season when they beat Reading 4-2 at Wembley, and in so doing achieved what Cardiff City so disappointingly failed to do last year against Blackpool, and this year in the regular season.

As a Bluebirds fan, it's a fact of life that I want Cardiff to be better than Swansea. But this season, in footballing terms we weren't. Whichever way some narrow minded Bluebirds fans want to carve it up, the fact is Swansea finished higher than us in the league, and with a side with less "stars" in it than ours, and have managed to achieve the holy grail of Premiership football and will be playing next season at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, Anfield, whilst next year we'll be plying our trade at London Rd (Peterborough), the Withdean Stadium (Brighton) and St Mary's (Southampton) which were all hosting League One football this season.

To be fair, Swansea have played good football under first Roberto Martinez, then Paulo Sousa and currently Brendan Rodgers. They play to their strengths, and play attractive football - in comparison, the Bluebirds who on their day can be sublime were too often inconsistent, lacking a cutting edge, and awful defensively. We looked like a team full of individual players rather than the team that Swansea seem to be.

Maybe next season things will change. The Bluebirds will be the underdogs in South Wales next season, and maybe , just maybe that, and a new manager will mean the pressure is off a little bit, and we can concentrate on rebuilding - as we'll surely have to, and fighting another season in the Championship.

In the meantime, the Jacks are in the Premiership - we're not. And we need to get over it. Yes it'll be galling watching them every Saturday on MoTD, but no more galling than it was watching Blackpool this year. And look what happened to them......