GLENN Roeder last night angrily denied Newcastle's season had amounted to yet another failure, despite his side crashing out of the UEFA Cup at the last-16 stage.

A 2-0 defeat to Dutch side AZ Alkmaar saw the Magpies exit Europe on the away-goals rule, and ensured that the club's 38-year silverware drought would be extended by at least another 12 months.

Given that they are currently in the bottom half of the Premiership table, the final two months of the campaign look set to be little more than an exercise in damage limitation.

But despite his side's failure to defend the three-goal advantage they established during last week's first leg on Tyneside, Roeder dismissed suggestions that his first full season in charge of the club would be remembered as an opportunity squandered.

"It's too easy to say that it's another season of failure for Newcastle," said the Londoner, who must now attempt to raise his troops' spirits ahead of Sunday's Premiership trip to Charlton. "Everyone knows the problems we have had in terms of injuries.

"The squad has been decimated for six months with injuries and, at times, I've had to pick up points with a team that was minus a dozen senior players.

"Even now, we're still without Michael Owen, a world-class striker and Shola Ameobi, a player who scored a goal every other game for me last year.

"We've only just got a lot of our players back fit in the last couple of weeks. We got Stephen Carr back after he had got injured playing for the Republic of Ireland, he played one game and he got injured again."

Nevertheless, with just four senior players sidelined - Owen, Ameobi, Carr and Celestine Babayaro - Newcastle lacked both the ambition and wherewithal needed to trouble an Alkmaar team that has become adept at overturning the odds.

In the run-up to the game, Roeder had insisted that his side would not be travelling to Holland intent on sitting back to defend their lead. In reality, they could hardly have been more hesitant or unadventurous if they had tried.

Newcastle's midfielders appeared uncertain how to approach the game, while Obafemi Martins, so influential seven days earlier, delivered a masterclass in how not to take the pressure off the players behind him.

The Nigeria international's goalscoring ability is not in doubt, but his inability, or unwillingness, to retain possession and bring his team-mates into the game was a key component in Newcastle's downfall.

Paul Huntington's nervous defensive display was another major defect but, at just 19 years of age, the Cumbrian can hardly be pilloried for his performance. Instead, questions must be asked about Roeder's refusal to sign a left-back, other than the chronically injured Olivier Bernard, during either the pre-season or January transfer windows.

"We had too many players off form," admitted Roeder. "Experienced players, who I would have expected to have done better.

"I'm hugely disappointed about what happened. I can't sit here and explain how disappointed I am personally.

"Players who I would have expected to have played well, played poorly. There were some decent performances, and I don't want to tar everyone with the same brush. But we needed everyone to have played well to have gone through, and that wasn't the case."

Alkmaar manager Louis van Gaal praised his players' efforts after they overhauled a two-goal deficit for the second successive UEFA Cup game in a row.

"This was a massive performance," said van Gaal, who has now beaten Newcastle on three different occasions following his Barcelona side's defeat to a Faustino Asprilla hat-trick in 1997. "Mentally, it is very tough when you are trailing 4-2, but we had proved before that we could do it.

"The biggest quality of a manager is to get the players to believe in what you want them to do."