Sometimes in football you are in limbo at certain stages of the season and certain stages of your contract and it was nice to get it sorted out in the end. I had one or two options but my first choice was always to stay at Wednesday, I’ve had a couple of good years here and I’m looking forward to the new season again.

A lot of people look at age and make that an issue, whether you are too young or too old, I am at the stage now that I am quite happy to point out that age is just a number. The fitness side of things and the training side of things, I am still at the front of running and things like that so that’s not really been an issue. A lot of people attach a bit of stigma towards somebody’s age but luckily enough I’ve got a manager who knows what I’m like and knows my fitness situation so that really didn’t come in to play. It was whether or not he decided I was good enough in taking the club forward.

If you take myself at the club there is nobody else over the age of 30 at the moment. I think the average age is very young, about 23/24, and I think that maybe caused us problems at the start of last season, a little bit of inexperience at Championship level but as the season went on the lads grew in stature and learnt a lot from the early games. We finished the season on a high so hopefully we can start the season the way we finished.

We’ve got about 12 fit senior players at the moment and we have drafted in three or four of the younger squad to tide us over during our pre-season trip away in America. Hopefully by the time we travel over to Preston we will have three or four of the senior pros back again, two or three of them look to be making good progress so hopefully they can start taking part soon.

We’ve played five pre-season games and I’ve already played in five different positions so I really don’t know what is going to happen. It was a fantastic award to get, it was a little bit tongue-in-cheek but it is still nice to be acknowledged for doing something quite different. I’m just hoping that I don’t have to put the goalkeeping gloves on again, at the moment I’ve played right wing-back, left-back and centre-half, I really don’t know what is going to happen, I think it all depends on injuries and things like that and players they have available at the time. Versatility can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing, it lends itself to a player’s form being up and down, if you are changing position all the time you can’t really get any consistency. At the end of the day if I am playing then I am not going to complain too much about it.

We are that one year more experienced, both the players and the coaching staff, the manager had coached in the Premiership and the leagues below the Championship, but not this one so it was a learning curve for him as well. We are all one more year experienced, we’ve got two or three lads in who have played at Championship level, realistically we have got to be aiming for mid-table, that would continue the progress on an upward spiral. But if you get four or five results in a row you can be up in and amongst it and your targets can change, but first and foremost we have got to be challenging those teams around mid-table. Hopefully we will get off to a good start and not be looking over our shoulders all season like we did last year.