Great post.
I'm certain plenty of football fans have a similar mentality. It's hard to stay relaxed when there's so much at stake and the higher your hopes the harder the fall, so it's easier to expect the worst and then win than be confident and bullish and then lose out. Perhaps with City it's a more common mentality because of the hardships we've been through. Most pundits are still backing City because they objectively look at what we've done before, it's harder for many of our fans to take that view. I think Arsenal fans are similarly downbeat. They wouldn't openly admit they are confident they'll win the league, when they've got an excellent chance to.
And then you have the dippers. Part of the reason they're so detestable is the fact they will go the other way. They'll happily say they'll win the lot. They're not bothered. If they don't they'll just make an excuse for it.
At the moment, I'm relaxed. I'm not confident we'll win it, but I think we're in a great position to. No one has ever won 4 in a row. The fact we have a chance to is testament to how brilliant our manager and squad of players is. They won three in a row as part of a treble. That's fucking absurd. And whilst we might not be blown away by the performances so far, we've won every CL game and are in the quarters. We've got a home game this weekend to make the FA Cup semi finals. And we're 1pt off top and play one of the teams above us in our next league game.
That despite our captain going in the summer, Mahrez also leaving and plenty of key players missing through injury/suspension.
Most teams would have coasted through this season buzzing off what happened last year. We've got a chance of doing back-to-back trebles! Soak it up. If we don't we don't, but to be in this position is unbelievable and why the fuck wouldn't we back ourselves to do it.
This is pretty much how I feel about it. If we are in it till the end, and challenging properly, win or miss out, it will be a huge achievement imo and a real show of character. On the back of the last 3 seasons and the last one in particular. Especially if it is in multiple competitions.
At times this season, it looked like we could run away with it. At others, it looked like we might drop off. Neither has happened. But, we are still there, and still have the potential to do either.
Most of our points have been dropped through a combination of really unfortunate luck, bad refereeing margins, and isolated moments of stupidity.
Spurs - poor luck, hit the woodwork twice and nothing, they hit the woodwork twice, both in. That's a 4 goal swing just in the thicknesses of a bawhair. Plus that refereeing decision to stop grealish when through on goal. Liverpool at home - poor refereeing with perfectly good goal disallowed, haaland and doku marginally missing chances. Liverpool away, poor luck with the post and crossbar, stupidity for the goal conceded, but somewhat lucky not to lose to a last gasp penalty. Chelsea away, stupidity mostly. Chelsea home, poor refereeing, denied a clear penalty at the end and given fuck all stoppage time in a game where the keeper was booked for time wasting and with multiple var checks. Palace, stupidity. The only games we actually played badly were Villa, part of Wolves, and a lot of Arsenal, although we were a bit unlucky with the late goal.
And yet, with all that, still there. I keep thinking, others must have their turn for a but of bad luck and refereeing margins not falling their way. And we have hopefully dealt with the stupidity. If either Arsenal or Liverpool go on to win it from here by winning every game left, fair fucks to them, we will have made them work for it and they will have deserved it. If they don't, and we capitalise on that, fucking magic. Either way, full credit to our guys for being there.
