Things just can’t get much worse for Nottingham Forest at the moment, and after yet another defeat the future is looking increasingly bleak.
It’s a familiar sensation; so familiar in fact that it is morbidly comforting.
The key difference between now and the innumerable low points of the recent era is that we don’t even have a grudge through which to channel our despair.
Supporters leaving Hillsborough this evening were, more than anything else, baffled.
The biting disappointment, the anguish, and above all the fear are usually expressed through some form of vitriolic assault on the players.
At the moment the feelings are simply bubbling beneath the surface, and nobody can quite imagine what is coming next.
We are one of the league’s top spenders, we have a promising set of players, we are playing to a standard at least befitting of mid-table, and yet the results are just not coming.
Although Forest were far from convincing throughout, there is almost no doubting that we deserved to leave with at least a point.
Wednesday keeper Lee Grant tipped two goalbound headers narrowly over the bar, and his sprawling save to deny Andrew Cole’s low drive is perhaps the most conclusive epitome of our evening in Yorkshire. It just wouldn’t go in.
Prior to today’s game I was unusually satisfied with Calderwood’s attitude, and I have spent hours convincing myself and others that we will turn the corner before too long.
But after tonight’s game it isn’t looking anywhere near as simple.
This is precisely the kind of ‘run’ that can very quickly become a full-scale dogfight.
And with players scratching their heads and despairing at the end of every unjust defeat there is good reason to doubt our squad’s character in the face of adversity.
If our worst fears are indeed realised, games like this evening’s will be a suitable reference point for where it all went wrong.
Yet another freak deflection saw us fall behind after a drab but competitive first half, and – circumstances as they are – it was always going to be a long way back.
In throwing men forward we conceded any scrap of defensive resilience and both sides squandered clear chances as the clock ticked by.
Every Forest attack was a story of agonising potential, thwarted by through balls drifting centimetres off course and the goalkeeper’s fingertips.
Nothing dropped for us, and even the ball boys played their part.
Under duress from the red-faced, black-toothed natives, one youngster shamelessly sat with his arms folded and allowed goalkeeper Grant to run down the clock by collecting the ball at his leisure.
It was one of those nights.
The major concern at the moment is that we are having those days and those nights with terrifying regularity.
There is, of course, a chance that we will bag the elusive three points and set about a run that will haul us to the paradisiacal obscurity of mid-table.
Until that run comes I just don’t know what to think.
Dropping back into the third tier is, at this stage, unimaginable. It doesn’t even bear considering how few of those supporters who backed Forest through three years of horror would be prepared to do it again.
Currently dwelling in Sheffield, the conclusion to my evening was literally wrestling my way on to a heaving ‘Supertram’ amongst droves of the aforementioned slurring Yorkshiremen. Things can only get better.
