“I don’t know what this says – you have to look at every game individually and where things went wrong because each has its own story, you cannot simply say that we win against some and lose against others.
"It is too easy to say there is a general pattern. If you want to learn from your mistakes you have to analyse every single match and see what we did badly – and every time against Manchester United and Chelsea it was something different, not the same thing repeatedly.
“As you grow older you keep growing in experience and character, and I’m convinced we can do something next season. We have to learn from things but we’re still young and, while we mustn’t use it as an excuse, we had a lot of injuries to really important players over the season – like Robin, Cesc and Andrey – and didn’t play many games with our best team.
"If we can keep our players fit I’m sure something good can happen."
Vermaelen is pleaed though that he was able to get as many games under his belt this season as he did, which meant he quickly acclimatised to the physical nature and pace of the game in England.
“I really didn’t expect to play as much as I did this season,” he added.
"As it is, I’ve played 45 or 50 games and that was really important. Over that time I kept learning about the league, kept adapting, and that was important because I’d come straight from the Dutch league to perhaps the toughest league in the world.
"It means that every game was a hard one for me. It’s better the English way, because there are more allowances given for both sides and you can have proper contests with strikers.
"They’re all really physical and hard to play against here – the intensity can be unbelievable but it’s nice to play every game at a level like that."
The Belgian's partnership with William Gallas was another highlight in Vermaelen's debut season in the Premier League.