It's a really weird feeling at the moment. I was so incredibly emotionally invested in this when I was typing this out 107 pages and 2 and a half months ago. We are right, slap bang in the middle of a title race with only 5 games to go and I'm watching the games with a weird sense of resignation? I've got none of the nerves of 18/19 and 21/22 where every game was torture and hysteria.
We've let it out of our hands but we're still essentially in exactly the same place we were in those two seasons and I didn't think we were out of it then. A big part of it is obviously the performances and the way we've been dumped out of two cup competitions either side of those two desperately disappointing league results...but we're still right there, in with a shout.
The fixtures came up down the bottom of the screen on sky today and you're thinking...Brighton away Thursday ain't easy for city. Forest away was tough for us, that won't be easy for them either. Forgot they had spurs away, too. Then you look at Arsenal, fair fucks if they get through those 5 with even 3 wins and a couple of draws.
We don't have to play well to win out. Performances mean nothing at this stage. We just have to scrape through, as we've grown a habit of doing.
Saying that, I actually thought even at half time today that there was some decent progress made in terms of performance. It was noted, repeatedly, on sky that we were quite slow on the ball but I felt we needed that sense of calmness and control, it's been totally lacking in recent weeks where weve been trying to do everything at 100 miles an hour, leaving ourselves wide open at the back. We can be slow in the build up but then move it quicker in the final third which we did especially well in the second half, with Diaz, Gakpo and Jota all contributing. Not to mention Gravenberch once he got that goal.
I almost don't want to get dragged back into full scale believing because it is the hope that kills you. And it has been cruel in the past. Thank fuck we beat Barca and then won in Madrid in 2019 or that season might've been even more cruel than 2014. A couple of millimetres from an unbeaten, 100 point, league and European cup winning season. Fucking centre half hit and hope with 10 minutes to go in the penultimate game. Then the City Villa debacle. Gerrard...Coutinho...it was too perfect.
You get so invested and then so fucking gutted when you miss out that it's almost better to feel a bit hopeless about it and take emotions out. But logically...logically, it could still happen. Fuck off, brain.
