A few days after our play-off semi-final defeat to Swindon, it’s still difficult to believe our season is over.

After losing the first leg, I never considered a scenario in which we’d lose. I was only thinking about winning.

The lads put on a terrific display on Monday but it just wasn’t enough. I’m sure when we go through the match in detail, we’ll find areas in which we’d have liked to have done better but I thought the lads have put the spirit back into Charlton throughout this season and Monday night typified that.

They gave everything and going out on penalties is a cruel way to lose.

The dressing room was quiet afterwards – I’ve never been in a dressing room with players so distraught.

There’s not much you can do in those circumstances. But I’m proud of them and they should be proud of themselves.

People say that for an entire season to come down to spot-kicks is incredibly harsh.

But no one has ever found a better way to resolve things and we can’t say that the play-offs are a bad thing because we missed out on automatic promotion and the play-offs gave us another chance.

We did all we could to win the game in 90 and 120 minutes. Even when we went down to 10 men we kept two players up front and played 4-3-2 and we hit the post twice in extra-time.

So it hurts but you just have to get over the pain and move on. The pain will heal over the next three or four days and we will start to think about the future. We’ll have a couple of days’ break and then we’ll be back in.

It’s been a tough few years to be a Charlton fan and this doesn’t make it any easier but I hope the supporters recognise they saw a team and a squad of players giving it everything.

All the supporters I speak to have said they’ve seen performances this year where they’ve seen the lads give everything and that’s what this football club is all about.

The players have restored some pride back in the club this season and the fans have also done themselves and us proud because the atmosphere on Monday night, for example, was fantastic.