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9th May 2017
01:38pm 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 a couple of 'big wins' in May isn't going to get those points back
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Every year the useless stewards try to form a useless wall, but still hundreds of fans rush on just in the hope of getting a selfie with Gabriel Obertan.
If it’s a Word 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 scrambling around for 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 Argentinian left backs. Or maybe there’s an U21 tournament, where you can have fun guessing which hotly-tipped English prospects will be playing in the Championship in a few years time. Or god forbid, you start following the MLS.
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But you already spent £55 on that green and orange third kit back 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 actually 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 how you had Memphis Depay there for the whole of last season).
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 (and no hope of winning the league), and the other has tumbled to mid table. So 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 he's still a name, and there’s reportedly interest from someone Chinese or Russian clubs – or if they're a bit older, wherever Harry Redknapp is managing now – so he suddenly starts turning it on.
Some things never change.
LOL, no.
