On Tuesday afternoon I encountered a dilemma which I imagine will now occur in the build up to every single one of our remaining fixtures: either go to the game and hope (in spite of the avalanche of information indicating otherwise) for some glitch in the matrix which will result in something pleasant happening; or not go to the game and feel like shit whatever happens.

In light of the stats flying around Twitter that have suddenly outed us as the worst team to be a fan of in the country (Cov fans don’t need no survey to know this, Jesus Christ), it seems to me that supporting Coventry City is not unlike being in an abusive relationship or having Stockholm syndrome.

Our love is like the love that dare not speak its name. If my girlfriend was Coventry City, I would have deleted her long ago. She’d invite you on dates to then not show up. She’d come out with you and your friends looking amazing and then, out of nowhere, do a shit on the bar. She’d tie you down, making like she was gonna indulge you in some freaky, long-winded sex game, and then pull out all of your toe nails, cover you in jam, and release a swarm of wasps into the bedroom, before ringing the police off your mobile and exiting the house, leaving the phone just out of reach.

Unfortunately, as Neil highlights in his excellent piece on Sky Blues Blog (my elder, wiser, blog brother), we can’t dump Coventry, we can’t even go on a break. We give them an inch, and they take far more than a mile every single season. I’ve fallen for my captor, and if someone came to try and emancipate me (my actual gf for example) I’d tell them to leave me in peace with my melancholy because they simply didn’t understand.

I got soaked cycling to Euston. By the time I’d reached Cov, left the station, been greeted by Tim Fisher (who I see on every single train, including the inward Peterborough one, where I dread to think what I bored him with), and watched him get into his ride without so much as a backwards look at my partially soaked, soon-to-be-far-more soaked frame, I was already feeling like I’d made the wrong decision.

These days the steward by my entrance greets me by name and shakes my hand every game so at least someone is making off-the-field progress this season.

Another game without Maddison and Armstrong. Another game with Joe Cole. Since making his debut for the U21’s last Monday, the 18-year-old Jodi Jones has risen astronomically from ‘one for the future’ to ‘first XI regular and only creative hope’.

I could talk about the rest of the team. I could talk about how Sam Ricketts continues to spirit his way into the side every week regardless of whether he spends the preceding 90 doing handstands with his cock out or playing football - but it’s a moot point. Mowbray has turned the best XI in the league into also rans, so if the best team can’t win a game, discussing which of our second teams were selected seems academic.

We got a corner early on and Joe Cole looked ready to keel over as he made his way to the touchline.

Colchester’s first move was a slick exchange down the left which ended in the ball running all the way across goal. Immediately any thoughts of us being immune from losing to to a team that had conceded 90 whatever goals this year evaporated.

Jodi Jones started as he meant to go on, breaking at pace from his station on the right and setting up play, be it with a cross or a lay-off into space created by the magical retreat of League One defenders backing off for their lives. It was like Ryan Kent was back, just younger, and even more raw. Every time he didn’t have it things got worse, like when Lorentzson almost scored an own goal by shinning a clearance just over the bar.

The atmosphere - if you can call it that - was like an agitated congregation; you could hear hands scratching around in pockets for pennies to lob into the collection. Bemusement spread round the ground when the 10k+ attendance was announced.

Fleck’s runs forward were utterly devoid of their early season purpose and conviction. Sky blue shirts ambled towards the opposition’s half, knowing full well that they were about to turn back around and offload to someone they hoped would take a risk on their behalf. Colchester could smell the collective lack of responsibility and quickly executed their plan: packing the midfield and forcing us onto wings we didn’t want to use, and hemming us in at throw-ins like we were a pack of clueless under 14’s: rudderless and afraid.

When they scored it was almost a relief. At least I could stop pretending that things weren’t going that badly.

It came down the left: from what I could see, someone got skinned, the ball got pulled across, RCC palmed it out, and they gobbled it up. I can’t really put into words how odd it feels to be expecting one of the worst teams in the division to, at any moment, score against you, having watched the season (and more specifically, the home season) we have watched this year. It’s like your best mate’s accidentally taken 8 tabs of acid, and when he turns up at parties, looking and sounding like your mate, it’s kind of heartbreaking when he talks to you in elvish and starts drinking oven cleaner.

In response to what he must have seen coming, Mowbray switched Murphy (the leggy, pacy, winger) to the left, and moved Joe Cole (the expired battery hen and former number 10) into the centre #masterstroke . Jones was still finding loads of space, and when he did something normally came of it. Our best move stemmed from one of his jinks, with Murphy’s shot eventually being blocked.

How does that make the dressing room feel when an 18-year old from League Two walks into the team and immediately, and justifiably, makes everyone look pedestrian. Do they hate him?

Following the #masterstroke Murphy did his man a few times and made us look almost dangerous.

We had given Colchester all the confidence in the world, and they were somehow hanging onto possession in extremely tight areas, despite lots of pressing, while we were giving it away at every opportunity.

Just before half-time we got the shit-smeared lifeline we just about deserved. Cole crossed one in, they flopped it, Fortune won it, a sequence of events that somehow concluded with Vincelot being scythed down in the box.

Penno.

The chips are down. Confidence is shot. We NEED an equaliser and haven’t looked like scoring of our own volition. Who steps up? An experienced head, someone who’s played in international tournaments, or someone who’s played more than 50 career games, or maybe someone who is enough of a professional to take responsibility for a pressured penalty, because he knows that if a young lad misses it, then this disillusioned crowd is liable to undeservedly give him hell.

Jacob Murphy picks up the ball. Riiiiight. And, of course, he misses. Give a shit. I care more about Joe Cole, MAF, John Fleck, and Sam Ricketts’ willingness to let a kid take a bullet for them. The character of our team, the mentality of our fans, and the utter hopelessness of our quest this season was neatly summarised in the 15 seconds it took for the taker of that penalty to be elected. If I was sane, I would have left before it was taken and come back in ~~August~~ never.

The eternal wisdom of some our fans led them to boo Jacob Murphy after this. I can’t even begin to discuss that behaviour.

At half time the concourse watched a striker belonging to a team we’d seen relegated to League One a season or two before us, scoring the opening goal at Wembley against Holland. If we’re top of the Premiership in 7 years time - and you can hold me to this - I will subsist exclusively on a diet of cigarette butts and animal faeces for the rest of my life.

The second half followed a pattern which never threatened to include a Coventry equaliser. It was like Southend away all over again, with their eleven men behind the ball, waiting to hit us on the break, while we toiled away, with no width or creativity, trying to break down a team that has been broken down almost a century of times in only 38 games this season.

Our second top goal scorer, Jacob, got taken off to cheers. Scuse my French, but, kill yourselves.

Their players contrived to prolong the vague mystery of the outcome by refusing to convert their breakaway, instead shooting too close to RCC - who is fast becoming the only candidate for any kind of end-of-season award. As the boys said in the happy-go-lucky Nii Lamptey Pod this week, how are we going to muster the calories to clap this side if they try and walk around the ground for a lap of appreciation at the denouement. That will be an awkward few minutes.

At no point did we - in commentators’ parlance - lay siege to the Colchester. This team, this shit team, rode out the modicum of pressure we could muster with a degree of composure their fans probably haven’t ever witnessed this season.

Watching us these days isn’t just disappointing, or depressing - if only - it’s genuinely heart breaking. It’s heart breaking to have hope - that immortal and untouchable feeling - dangled in front of you, with genuine substance behind it, only for it to not only fizzle out or mellow - if it had merely mellowed we’d still be in the top four of this god-awful league - but to evaporate so comprehensively, that you can watch highlights of early season games and scarcely kid yourself into believing that you witnessed those events.

The main event of the second half was a young man being baited by his friends, plus another thousand or so people, for being so drunk he had to be escorted from the ground after chundering all over the floor. A source close to the young man indicated that he had, as reported by the chants, only drunk two pints.

We ended the game with a chaotic shambles of players out on the pitch, fluidly wandering into unfamiliar positions - like a kind of fear and loathing total football. My favourite moment was Vincelot’s spell as striker, George Thomas (the poor youth team sod who was last seen being a genius at Fleetwood away and winning us the game) dropping into defensive midfield, and Stephens sidling out to the left wing.

Tudgay had a hopeful volley and RCC saved us from 2-0 right at the death.

There were boos at the end.

While this will not be our worst league position during the half-a-century-long slump, it might well be the worst sustained period of bad form we have ever endured. Hearing Paul, a man who has supported Cov for longer than most of us have been alive (sorry mate), saying that this season, of all the seasons, might have taken his loyalty out to the woods and popped it one in the back of the head, gives some perspective to quite how bad this is.

I can still remember Millwall - with Jim O-Brien celebrating behind the goal. Someone tell me it was real….

Yoko Oh No

Soaked at Priestfield

No hay in the meadow

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

TLS Awards: Volume 3

TLS Awards: Volume 2

The Lonely Season's Alternative End of Season Awards, Volume 1

The Final Squeak

90 minutes of paradise