No, I refuse to do a Cheltenham/horse racing related quip…
The reason for that headline is that we did indeed manage to get very lucky with results this week.
Seeing Gills, Crewe, Fleetwood and especially Morecambe lose might have been the perfect set of outcomes going.
And had Wycombe put a few more past the Cod types, we might have even – somehow – moved up a place.
Maybe we should just not play any more games this season? It seems to do us better.
Alas, we can’t, and we head west tomorrow trying to avoid those strewn on the street post-Festival.
Some may be comatose and covered in vomit, so at least they’d fit in our management team.
Really though, I don’t think anyone is looking forward to the actual game itself.
Maybe a few weeks ago we would have been, but it’s dawning on more and more people this umpteenth-game-without-a-win run isn’t a blip.
That internet meme gif thing with the dog supping a cup of tea, whilst in a burning house, saying “This is fine” is going through many heads right now.
Last week against Lincoln, we were better but we were still nowhere near being good enough for victory.
Injuries don’t help, and you do have to wonder what the fuck we do during training, but over-relying on youngsters comes at a price.
We’re pitiful up front, and now Aaron Pressley is never to darken the Plough Lane doors again.
A nation mourns.
He was the new Marcus Forss, wasn’t he? He certainly had plenty of hype around him when he came.
And I think he managed to sum up the wretchedness of our loan signings this season.
Put it this way – we’ve sold Ollie Palmer, Cosgrave is injured, Cosgrove is missing if not especially missed, and I’ve forgotten who else passes off as our strikers now.
Yet Pressley returns to Brentford and we collectively go “meh”.
What’s clear now is that we’ll be limping towards the end of the season, and whatever it throws up at us.
We might get a win or two along the way – sod’s law will ensure it will be the first game after we go down.
Or it could be against Franchise . We could get relegated yet beating them will be seen as having a successful season.
Just as well there aren’t end-of-season DVDs any more. We go down but a win over that lot will make it a triple disc box set.
We’ve still got four games before then, now that Charlton has been re-arranged, and a lot can still happen.
It probably won’t though. Tomorrow may see us enter into the bottom four, even with a draw.
Gills have to beat Sheffield Wednesday, and Morecambe need to get their midweek stuffing out of their system at Wigan.
Ordinarily, you would have a bit more confidence that we could put just a degree of daylight between us and the bottom four tomorrow.
But despite the bravado, our collective confidence is shot. Both on the field and off it.
The players can only play well for limited periods in the game, and we’ve shown we just don’t have the quality now to make that count.
Add in the inevitable defensive fuckups (including from the increasingly disappointing Nik Tzanev) and wins seem further away than ever.
Or to put it another way – we have nine games left and if we won none of them you wouldn’t be that surprised.
Your editor will be there tomorrow, but I’m at QPR on Sunday so you’ll get a proper report up Monday.
Maybe I’ll actually have something positive to write about? Chances are though, I probably won’t…