I promised myself some positivity this week. It’s proving difficult, but as the days pass by I am finding myself more relaxed about the prospect of the team having to fight for their Premiership ‘lives’ this weekend. Does that mean something has happened to give me hope that they can produce a performance that will turn things around? If anything I’ve got an increasing suspicion that won’t be the case, that Jewell will continue his cautious approach and that the slow death will creep on.
I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, I’ve not got the foggiest why I’m feeling good and it could have nowt to do with the game whatsoever. For the first time in a while I’ve had a good week at work, including a first class trip to the smoke and my first good look at the (exterior) of Wembley (it’s impressive). The kids have been in good form and as always they’ve got a knack of putting things in perspective for you.
The one thing that I can’t claim is that I’ve been able to put the football to one side. I can’t walk into a room without someone asking me about Latics’ prospects and even my four year old has made a point of reminding me of how good things used to be.
Her attitude towards football is ambivalent to say the least and yet last night, watching Milan give Man U a lesson she asked me who my favourite Latics player was.
‘At the moment it’s Emile Heskey’
‘But who’s your next favourite?’
‘I don’t know if I’ve got one, probably Leighton Baines ‘ (she only knows those two and De Zeeuw)
‘what about Jimmy Bullard?’
‘I’ve told you before, if doesn’t play for Latics anymore, if plays for Fulham’
[there follows a lull in conversation why she thinks that over]
‘Dad? The next time Latics are on, can we watch old Latics?’
So there you have it, even a four year old girl, with little interest in the game knows that this current mob isn’t a patch on their predecessors. We’ll make a fan of her yet.
Neither have I stopped caring about relegation. I’ve always known that it wasn’t the end of the world and I haven’t especially enjoyed my experience of the best league in the world, but at the end of the day, I’ve been through relegation and it’s horrible. I don’t want to do it again.
I could pretend that I’ve stopped sweating the big stuff, that I’m more bothered about the style than the substance of the next two games, that it’s more important to go down fighting, to look like we case and to show we know how the game should be played than it is to stop up.
Conversely I know that if the players do that, then we’ll stop up, but really I have little trust that it will happen.
So why the positivity? Maybe it’s the good weather, maybe it’s blind hope or maybe I’ve regressed to the days where results didn’t matter because my team really were the best in the world. Nope, it’s more likely to be the calm before the storm and mad panic is just waiting around the corner.
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