Even the supposed relief of a major tournament summer doesn’t compensate for Leeds United having kicked you right in the balls again. I appreciate some readers here won’t have balls, but you get the drift: yet another let down, yet another no show, a further chapter in Failure for Football Supporting Idiots, Vol 349.

Raking at the scar tissue, more than one insomnia-ruined night over the summer, I felt a familiar bitterness towards the club I’m supposed to love. Some of my pointless anger came from memories of the Southampton fans. First, they were leaving Wembley at the same time we did, missing even the presentation, and second, it just seemed like a day out for them, not the culmination of a near fifty-game slog which threw up every kind of emotion.

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