Nul points

Wednesday, 4-0 win at Millwall, Saturday, 2-1 win at Swansea, Tuesday, 4-3 win, Rotherham at home, Saturday, 3-1 win, Birmingham at home. In the EFL every other week seemed to have multiple games, we rattled out wins, supercharged our season. WWWW. Season-defining momentum.

This season we have had two multi-game weeks, both following a promising sequence of results and performances. The first came after a win against Tottenham and a draw with Man U: Saturday, 1-0 loss at Forest, Tuesday 1-0 loss, Palace at home, Sunday, 2-1 loss, Bournemouth at home. The second came after a win against Chelsea and a draw away at Fulham. Thursday, 2-0 loss, Brighton at home, Sunday, 6-0 loss, City at home.

4 home games, 1 away game. 1 goal for, 12 against. Extent of collective belief torched, hard to estimate.

Brighton was tough to take after seeming to find a good formula to compete, even in ostensibly harder fixtures. Though in a way it wasn’t a terribly surprising result, given Brighton are a top half side and had key players returning from injury. We were marginally on top until we conceded, were a touch unfortunate to go behind, but have rarely looked like we have good solutions when we’re losing games this season. That is probably the limit to what our “good formula to compete” currently looks like.

Manchester City was the fourth time we’ve taken a proper beating this season and certainly the worst of the four. An afternoon where we chucked in a performance that any of the other 19 teams in the league would probably have had enough to beat, against one of the half dozen teams who could slap us even at full power.

What to do with these demoralising weeks? Diminish them? A 0-8 aggregate scoreline across two home games feels disastrous but in practice there’s no additional punishment for being rubbish, just the same zero points out of six we got from respectable away performances at Arsenal and Forest. It is a cliché, but these aren’t the games that define your season. Though we will almost certainly have to beat at least a couple of near-Brighton-level opponents to stay up.

Laugh it off? The best thing I could say after the City game was at least it was over now and either we’d avoid relegation anyway and it wouldn’t matter or we’d go down and at least we wouldn’t have to repeat the experience next season. At 6-0 down gallows humour is always tempting, though the sarcastic round of “we’re going to score in a minute” during a rare moment of second half pressure felt rather too much like mocking our own players for my taste.

Learn from it? We might be beyond that now. At nearly 60 per cent of the way through the season, I fear that we have absorbed almost all the lessons we can at this point. If we are to up our points return in our final 16 games it’s probably more a case of game-specific tweaks, just damn well winning a few more margins or new personnel rather than something suddenly clicking.

We’ve found ways to improve certain things over the season (defending our box, staying in games) but some issues seem totally intractable – we don’t score enough goals, especially at home (only 8 in 12 games), especially when losing (only 5 across 15 games we’ve trailed in). The more the onus is on us to attack, the less threatening we become. We are yet to find a way to consistently make clear chances against set defences, though we can sometimes be clinical in transition, hence our superior goalscoring record on the road and when the opposition need to chase the game. Addressing this presumably explains the recruitment of Jaden Philogene and (the seemingly imminent) Julio Enciso, despite both ostensibly occupying roles we’re already overstocked in.

Put it in context? There is of course the underlying situation – the double promotion, a squad half recruited too long ago, half recruited too recently – but continually pointing that out feels defeatist. The immediate context though... the thing about being the small fry in this league is that every time you’re feeling good and throwing punches the fixture list is sneaking up behind you, ready to smash you back down to the ground.

Look at Wolves, three good results against Leicester, Manchester United and Tottenham, then there’s Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Chelsea ready to put them summarily back in their box (aggregate 9-1 defeat). Similarly, after 4 points from Chelsea and Fulham all felt pretty groovy at Portman Road, then Brighton, Manchester City and Liverpool appear menacingly round the corner. Brighton may not be like the other two but the thing with those other borderline unwinnable fixtures is you’re left with such a narrow path to any points in that block. You get one (incredibly tough) “winnable game” to accumulate anything and it only takes half an hour of bad football to make 0 from 9 almost a certainty.

Perhaps the only thing to do is put these little runs out of our mind? We’ve taken our licks but are a long way from dead. We’re still in the fight and there’s still a route through this. The likeliest outcome is that whilst we’re busy losing to Liverpool, Wolves will be getting similar treatment from Arsenal. The battle will still be on when we have both taken our punishment. Unlike the two teams below us we aren’t despairing and furious, fighting ourselves as much as the opposition.

It is important to keep it that way. Southampton after that. Arriving with little but pride to play for, not good enough for this league but certainly good enough to beat us on their day, their visit becomes must win. No off day, no fine margins, no spawny deflections, no opposition worldies, no refereeing blunders, none of the usual stuff that peppers a football match, permitted.

Too often the default in that sort of scenario at Portman Road is unhelpful. Like most stadiums, the stands always rock against elite opponents, if only out of sympathy for the task confronting the players. The heartening reception at full-time against City was stronger than I expected but not surprising.

Yet when the visitors are someone we imagine we should be beating, too often the atmosphere is nervous, then silent, then tetchy. When the Saints come around it has to be different. No weight of expectation, no fussing if it doesn’t go exactly to plan, just thousands trying to put the same energy into the players that we tried to give them last Sunday. In the unequal fight to stay in the league there aren’t many things we have that other teams don’t, sticking together might be all we have.