It's alive! But is it a Monster?
I couldn’t bring myself to make a posting after the Southampton game. It would have been very reactionary and not very rational such was my disappointment both on the night and for some days after. One gameless Saturday and one commendable midweek performance later a certain amount of rationality has been restored.
This season has not been memorable on a footballing front with few exceptions to date but may well be more remembered for off the field activities around Portman Road. One things for sure though like Frankenstein’s monster it won’t lay down and die.
Despite being the model of inconsistency and dishing up major debacles like the home defeat to the ‘Saints’ described by many as the worst Town performance in living history, the fact remains that going into the Reading game on Saturday we still have an outside but very realistic chance of making a top six finish.
This division has grown crazier by the season. Always renowned as being difficult to exit due to the ‘Yo-Yo’ syndrome of newly relegated clubs it now seems that you could throw your football pools predictions into the same bowl as the national lottery balls, such is the random nature of results in the Championship.
I can’t pretend to have enjoyed the season so far that’s as much due to the lack of atmosphere at home games as anything else and I sometimes think it would be nice to be put out if the misery of chasing an unlikely playoff place so I can stop staring dementedly at the league table working out the mathematical consequences of the days results and forthcoming fixtures.
A real supporter though won’t give up until the maths dictates otherwise. A realist would have given up before Christmas.
Sadly I’m one of the former, so my torment will continue for another month at least, which takes us into April.
The fixture list has thrown up a little ‘grand finale’ to the season with the visit of the ‘Budgies’ next month.
The caged Canaries in the Victorian coal mines had a better chance of survival than Bryan Gunn’s yellow tweeters have at the moment. The chance to hammer the final nail into their relegation coffin would be sweet. (I’m still hurting from the humiliation last December at Carrow Road) and if it were to project us into the top six at the same time it could attain legendary status.
The 2008-2009 season is still alive. How it lives in the memory will be dictated in the next six weeks. Certainly on April 19th.