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9th May 2017
02:36pm BST
Pundits love a good meaningless cliché. And following the ‘busy Christmas period’, we enter the ‘business end of the season’, where results really matter. Of course, that winless run your team had in November is the reason you’re not going to make the top four, and no streak in May is going to get those points back.
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Every year the PA warns people it is an offence to enter the field of play, and every year the stewards hopelessly form a useless human wall, but still hundreds of fans rush on just in the hope of getting a selfie with Gabriel Obertan.
If it’s a World Cup or Euros year, the summer is all good. But if not, that means no proper football until August. So like a pathetic junkie, you start seeking out alternatives. Maybe the Copa América is on, and you stay up all night to watch it, and start to become one of those football hipsters who go on about Chilean left backs.
Or maybe there’s an U21 tournament, where you can have fun guessing which English hot prospects will eventually be playing in the Championship in a few years. Or god forbid, you start following the MLS.
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But you already spent €60 on that green and orange third kit in September.
That group of lads in the office spent a whole week at the end of August picking their team, and you thought you’d join in. "I’m going to keep up this year," you told yourself. Every Friday at 4.45pm, with a cheeky beer at your desk, you were going to look at the stats, and do transfers, and keep track of who’s injured, and use your Triple Captain at the perfect moment.
But you’d forgotten about it after two weeks, and now you look back and see you’re dead last in the work table, with Riyad Mahrez still languishing as your captain (just like Memphis Depay did for the whole of last year).
When Sky were picking the fixtures four months ago, a match between two top sides with one game to go looked like a big deal. But now one of them have Champions League qualification locked down, with no hope of winning the league, and the other has tumbled to mid table, and it looks like we’ve got another boring Sunday afternoon on our hands.
Is your team ‘safe’ yet? Is 40 points enough to be ‘safe’? Are you just three points from ‘safety’? Does ‘safety’ mean just getting out of the relegation zone, or actually how may points you (theoretically) need to be mathematically ‘safe’?
Your team signed a highly rated young South American a few years back, and despite a decent start and a random hat-trick in a League Cup tie, he generally hasn't done much. But now he's out of contract, and there’s reportedly interest from some Chinese or Russian clubs – or if they're winding up their career, wherever Harry Redknapp is managing now – so he suddenly starts turning it on.
Some things never change.
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