Saturday Night, Sunday Morning... and Monday Morning too.
Saturday Night, Sunday Morning... and Monday Morning too.
Those who find themselves ridiculous, sit down next to me in the waiting room of doom.
It’s like the great Alan Sillitoe put it, ‘As soon as you were born you were captured by fresh air that you screamed against the minute you came out. Then you were roped in by a factory, had a machine slung around your neck.’
Saturday afternoon was tough. Sunday morning still felt rough.
After a 3-0 home defeat at the weekend, I saw Stoke City’s ground labelled, ‘The factory of sadness.’
That works doesn’t it? I like that. Although the factory no longer dominates our lives as it did in Victorian times, we still go to work – wherever that might be – and are roped in by that and the increasingly torturous commute which if by train is the machine slung around our neck, slowly strangling us with discomfort and unreliability whilst reaching into our pockets and bleeding them dry. Then the weekend comes. We seek escape. We need escape. A circus. A sideshow. Something, anything to entertain us, to divert us from the ennui of modern life.
But sometimes the football feels like the factory, or IS the factory. It offers little or no comfort. A factory of sadness, churning out kick after kick after punch after jab to the stomach. When the fun has well and truly stopped.
Monday morning brought no respite. Worse even.
You know what happened. The points deductions. The tit-for-tat of social media. The outrage. The magnanimity. The reality. And so we are in the midst of a two week break in which we must come to terms with being below the dotted line. The trapdoor. The rug has been pulled away.
Welcome to the waiting room of doom.
It’s sad in here. Even the magazines you browse through remind you of the fate that awaits: pictures of Blackburn and Preston and West Bromwich on a cold November Tuesday. An unending Cinerama of modern factories of sadness. Winston Smith’s screams emit from the surgery room. Another victim’s mouth is prized open in order to force feed a diet of unrelenting midweek away games and motorway closures. Please don’t make us go there again.
But it’s not over yet. It doesn’t have to be over. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Having said that, we are gong to have to outdo even last season’s Herculean efforts in the closing stages of the season. It’s going to be tough, but it can be done.
Maybe…perhaps…
The performance at Luton reaffirmed that we are a reasonably competent team. Yes, yes … it’s Luton, lads and not Man City, I know I know I know. Nonetheless we navigated our way through a tricky first half impressively: aggressive in the tackle, no nonsense at the back and threatening on the break. Textbook really. To be applauded in an away game of such magnitude.
We deserved a win. Luton looked a spent force. They were huffing and puffing and getting nowhere fast. They were gone. I allowed myself to believe. To believe that it simply couldn’t happen again. To believe that despite everything, everything was just about going to be alright. Or at least, better. For a while. For a bit.
More fool me.
Idiot.
Deceived again.
Gullible fool.
Those substitutions. I didn’t hate going three at the back in the late stages of the game, since Callum Hudson-Odoi replacing Divock Origi meant we were still looking to grab another goal. But Morgan Gibbs-White had been our heartbeat all game, pumping vital tackles and through balls all around the body all afternoon. We missed him, like a desert missed the rain, like a vital organ.
And the corners kept coming. The crosses kept coming. Relentless. They wouldn’t stop. Like reply all emails, persistently raining down their incompetence and despair. It didn’t feel inevitable Luton would score, but if you walk near a big puddle every day, chances are you are going to get wet, even if you strive to avoid it. The sensible thing is to at least take a very wide berth around it, or ideally, find another route.
We did neither.
We just crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. We watched with a stomach-churning sense of inevitability.
We kindly stepped up to Luton Town and lifted them off the hook with a smile before patting them down, gently wiping the dust off them and asking them how their day was. That’s how we roll.
So what’s to be done?
Watch. Wait. Get angry. Take it on the chin. Have faith that the mostly competent performances (aside from the obvious failings) will translate into some points. Do whatever you need to do to get through it really, whether that’s scribble BELIEVE in big letters on a bedsheet, or weep into your pillow each night - whatever works for you while we seek an exit from the waiting room of doom.
Some Things you Might Like:
One Day (Netflix).
Yeah… bit obvious this one, I know. I read the book back in the day, but don’t really recall much about it. I remember finding it difficult to warm to Dexter, and Emma working in a Mexican restaurant. And it being a bit sad. Maybe it was still a bit too close to the end of university for me to fully appreciate that weird period after when you have to do proper adulting and it’s not all they said it would be.
So I reluctantly watched the tv series that everyone was wittering on about. It’s good. Really really good. The bitesize instalments work a treat, making the narrative not feel forced. And it’s really really sad. Joyous, but sad. There is now more distance between the madness and me me me of the nineties. The show seems to fully accept how ridiculous and self-obsessed that period was.
I liked it. I want to go up to Arthur’s Seat again.
If you don’t know me, I am the author of ‘Reds and Rams: The History of the East Midlands Derby’ and ‘The History Boys: Thirty Iconic Forest Goals’ (both available in the Forest club shop). I have written pieces for Mundial magazine, Football Weekends magazine and edited two award-nominated fanzines.
If you do know me, I’m truly sorry.
