Left to our own devices: A long, long weekend for Leicester City fans
Leicester City really put us through it on Tuesday night. Now the emotional rollercoaster is closed for maintenance for what will feel like an eternity until we get to do it all again on Monday.
I've always been fascinated by the fan experience. Those words may conjure something very unemotional - mobile ticketing hell; ‘fan cam’; an 80s covers band playing outside the club shop before the game.
But no, I mean the real experience. What’s happening inside your brain when the ball flies across Leicester City’s penalty area in the 93rd minute. Mainly because of the question: are other people really going through the same thing as me?
In fact, I kind of wish when I went to home games everyone had little indicator bars floating above their heads showing how much time they think about Leicester City in a typical week. What would your percentage be?
Big game
It's absolutely unreasonable to expect anyone with a figure above 50% to survive the kind of experience we had in the last five or ten minutes at Elland Road, but survive we did and onwards we go to yet another of the biggest games in the club's recent history.
It's hard to describe just how massive the visit of Everton is.
I feel a bit like a tired ex-pro on TV increasing the number of times he uses the word “top” in relation to a player's quality. “This is a big, big game Clive.” (And they can't leave it there. They have to add: “It really is.”)
It's true though. We were describing Palace as a big game. Then Bournemouth became a huge game. After that, Wolves assumed the proportions of a massive game. And Leeds was gargantuan.
I don’t know where we go from gargantuan. We’ll have to invent a new word for when Everton roll into town.
As horrible as it is, it’s also refreshing to feel something again. This has definitely been a season to test levels of enthusiasm. Football fans aren’t supposed to let those wane at all. We're supposed to keep supporting the team, win or lose. Anyone who deviates from this is a plastic who doesn't do enough with their limbs when their team scores. To put it another way, they’ve committed the cardinal sin and their indicator bars have hit zero.
But there have been long periods in recent months when it feels like the entire club has been drifting. It's been tough not to give up hope of it all turning out fine in the end. And tough to keep putting the miles in, spending the money, keeping the faith.
That Jamie Vardy goal will have been worth the hundreds of pounds, hundreds of miles, the 2am bedtime for every one of those who made it up to Elland Road. It was nearly as good if you were just leaping around your living room.
Although the managerial change was long overdue, perhaps it came just in time to stir the emotions and give us something to make of this wretched campaign.
You could make it up
I'm writing this and reading it back and thinking it's all a bit melodramatic but then I remember that I had a really strong feeling towards the end of the Leeds game - that I definitely couldn't go through this another 5 times in the next 30 days or so.
Time seemed to stretch and morph and turn into something completely different when the ball fell to Patrick Bamford at the back post in the 90th minute. Seeing the ball exit left without finding the back of the net was actually a pleasant reminder that none of this is scripted.
It's often felt like some anti-Leicester individual, maybe a Spurs fan still bitter about 2016, has been writing this entire season - let's give them nothing to get excited about to start with, then a bit of hope, then just when they hit a bit of form we'll throw in a massive break for a winter World Cup, then nothing for weeks, then a bit more hope, then nothing again. Then, and only then, will we sack the manager. It has been, in football fan terms, torture.
Admittedly, it probably wouldn’t have been a Spurs fan at the typewriter as they’d have given their own side multiple trophies rather than multiple catastrophes.
Either way, here was the Mateta moment all over again only for Bamford to balls it up. And after a few seconds to check I was still able to function, I breathed a sigh of relief. We’re not only the team stupid things happen to.
Scoreflash
While they aren’t scripted, there have been lots of interesting narratives to follow throughout football lately: Arsenal and Manchester City; the whole Wrexham and Notts County thing; Bayern Munich not winning the league by 30 points.
However, when I speak to other football fans - particularly fellow Leicester supporters - about any of these stories, it feels like we're avoiding the real issue.
This issue, the possible relegation of Leicester City from the Premier League, is so much more important than whether Borussia Dortmund win the Bundesliga that I’m struggling to care about anything else football-related until our own situation is resolved.
But we’re still either staying up or going down regardless of whether our indicator bars are at 5% or 95%.
So after the quickfire chaos of coming back from a goal down twice in the space of four days, we're left to our own devices again until the next game. During that period, our relegation rivals are all playing.
What exactly are we supposed to do?
Use those devices to refresh live score apps every two seconds while pretending we’re able to do something more constructive?
Watch all these games and suffer like we did on Tuesday night?
Try to ignore it like we’re actually in control of our emotions, knowing what our own team does is essentially the deciding factor here?
It's a big, big decision Clive.
It really is.
(About 78% by the way. On a good day.)
