It's a feeling which can prove rather difficult to contain. No matter how much you carry on telling your inner critic that they should feel lucky after such a positive opening to the season, there will always be the nagging doubt that every minor bump in the road could be the beginning of a mammouth losing spell which sees the team relegated by the start of March.
Reflecting on Tuesday night's defeat at Oakwell, it would be easy to sound the alarm. With the team winless in its last seven league fixtures, and having been pretty comprehensively outplayed for much of the game, there were inevitably going to be worries raised by supporters, fearful of the club being dragged into yet another relegation battle.
It is those pessimistic souls that I am now calling on to take an extremely deep breath and observe the situation through the eyes of a neutral. It may be a well worn sporting rule to work by, but the table doesn't lie. We currently find ourselves in 13th position, seven points clear of the bottom three despite our stuttering form, a position that, despite our superb start to the campaign I am sure most would have settled for at this stage of the campaign if they were asked back in August.
When you also take into account the fact that so far this season we have managed to break our away hoodoo from last season, winning at various grounds around the country, including The Amex and Old Trafford. Have gone on a club record breaking number of minutes without conceding a goal in competitive matches and, at the time of writing, haven't lost a home game in our last eight, I really don't think we are having quite as rough a time of it as some people are making out.
Yes, the team looked poor in the second half against Barnsley, but the game happened to be our third match in the space of six days. The first of which was a physically and emotionally draining 120 minute backs to the wall epic against Manchester United. The second, a game which we should and probably would have won had Paddy not misjudged a cross into the box late on.
People can say that professional footballers should be able to recover sufficiently in the time frame to be able to cope, but when you factor in all the traveling and disruption to routine that a run such as this brings with it, it's hardly surprising that we failed to hold on to what was looking to be a valuable away point until the final 15 minutes.
After the match Freedman was his usual defiant self, going out of his way to bring the positives from the game into his comments whilst also getting a tad mixed up as to what constitutes an excuse and what doesn't:
"It was not an ideal start. It just goes to show how crucial the warm-up is, I thought after that we settled down and at half-time we deserved to go in one each, so I was pleased with the response of the lads. You don't make excuses because we're professionals but it has caught up on us injury-wise. It's not an excuse - Barnsley are a good team. The second-half performance was disappointing, but there are reasons for that. We're tired and we couldn't find that spark up front. A lot of credit to Barnsley - they kept going and they punished us."
It is now widely known that Dougie will never get too carried away with a result whatever the outcome. Following last weeks heroics against United. he presented a straight bat to every question asked of him with regards to his "tactical genius", simply stating that he was pleased for the fans and that, although it was a big achievement for the team, it didn't quite match up to surviving last season when he first took over.
Similarly, when he is asked about the squad after a bad result he shows the same lack of emotional involvement, letting everyone who is listening know that it is only one game, and that the team will bounce back. It may mean that he comes across a little bit detached in press conferences from time to time, but in essence all he is doing is keeping himself, and the club as a whole, grounded in the face of any extra confidence or doubt that may creep in.
We do have a tough run of games coming up in the next few weeks, but thanks to our start, we aren't in trouble just yet, and with the boys going to the City Ground on Saturday to play a very out of sorts Forest team, I am hopeful that we can halt the slump we find ourselves in at the moment before anyone gets too carried away.
As I said earlier, expectations can fluctuate from the slightest of changes, and perhaps we are now suffering from a slight overestimation of our chances this season. That being said, should we win again on Saturday all the doubts will float away and a feeling of optimism will appear once again. That's what supporting a team like ours brings to the table, an unpredictable and sometimes infuriating mixture of deep rooted fanaticism. Normally at this juncture people shout something along the lines of, "Go and support United!" but having just beaten them on their own patch I would suggest keeping the faith with the boys for a while yet, at least it's never boring.
Until next time...
