Parents who\u2019ve forgotten how exhausting young children are occasionally stop you and say: \u201cThe days are long, but the years are short.\u201d Some reel \u2013 which is where I get all of my information these days \u2013 altered it slightly to say: \u201cThe days are long, but the weeks are also long,\u201d which feels more accurate when you\u2019re on your hands and knees on the kitchen floor picking up sticky rice with a wet wipe.<\/p>\n
There are fewer saccharine Insta posts about football seasons feeling so arduously long and yet suddenly over at the same time. \u201cAh don\u2019t you remember when it was the Carabao Cup first round \u2013 so cute.\u201d This catches me out every year. Perhaps no one else is blindsided by football season by stealth, but here we are again: only a handful of games remaining to decide everything \u2013 and I\u2019m not entirely sure how we\u2019re at this stage.<\/p>\n
It feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago that I was sitting in a sports bar in Old Street feeling enthused about Spurs (my big team who win things). They may have lost that Super Cup to Paris Saint-Germain<\/a> in a Spursy manner \u2013 and the novelty of a Kevin Danso long throw wore off pretty fast \u2013 but there was a pragmatist in charge. A few weeks and a 2-0 win at the Etihad later<\/a> and there was a tiny part of my brain thinking Thomas Frank might win us the title. We never learn.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the weird excitement\/indifference every lower-league fan gets as their social media account keeps announcing signings you\u2019ve never heard of. All these strangers \u2013 Louis App\u00e9r\u00e9, Dom Ball, Ben Knight \u2013 now feel like old friends, in as much as you can be friends with someone you\u2019ve watched running around on CUFC TV in the middle of the night for nine months.<\/p>\n Now suddenly Cambridge United have fallen out of the automatic promotion places<\/a> at just the wrong time, while Tottenham have their third manager and could well be in the relegation zone by the time they kick off at the Stadium of Light on Sunday.<\/p>\n So I am left with a dual panic, once again asking whether any of this is giving me any pleasure \u2013 in a spare moment staring at the League Two table and mentally adding the four points we\u2019ve dropped in the past two games. If Ian Holloway is as honourable as I know he is, he\u2019ll give us two points at the end of the season after we battered Swindon 1-1 at the Abbey last Thursday; their 90th-minute equaliser wasn\u2019t even a shot. And then on Monday our keeper, Jake Eastwood, made perhaps his first mistake of the season in the last minute at Cheltenham<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s fourth v third on Saturday as we entertain Notts County, before going to the leaders, Bromley, on Thursday night. It is too stressful a week. We\u2019re on the eve of the apocalypse and I\u2019m studying the run-in of second-placed MK Dons (two tricky games out of four if you\u2019re interested).<\/p>\n In between that, I have to pivot to the agony of watching Spurs, who are objectively the worst team in the Premier League at the moment. The atrophy of the past few months. The failure of everyone to really understand that they may be in the Championship next season. Even writing it down, there\u2019s part of me that doesn\u2019t believe it. It\u2019s not a thing that happens.<\/p>\n