"I'm carrying on."
Those were Michael Carrick's words to me in the bowels of Coventry City's CBS Arena in the minutes after Middlesbrough's 2-0 defeat had condemned them to another season in the Championship.
A win would have taken Boro into the top six and a play-off semi-final against Sheffield United. Instead, attention this week has centred on Carrick's future as the club embark on an internal review into a season that began with talk of pushing for automatic promotion and ended mired in mid-table mediocrity.
Boro's finishing position of 10th, four points outside the play-off places, cannot be viewed as anything other than a failure.