24 hours from Pyewipe

So here we are in the pit of despair. Languishing in the depths, with little cause for hope. Arriving at the lowest and bleakest point in an inevitable sequence of long-term decline set in motion by a critical succession of poor executive decisions and sustained by a culture of churlish support and inflated expectations. But enough about the England team – what are Town's chances of turning the season around?

Watching England began for me as a light relief from the hard slog of supporting Grimsby. After travelling for hours and spending a fortune to watch the Mariners lose 4-0 at Watford or Birmingham, and then feeling miserable as hell for the next week, it was a low-risk emotional investment to watch England on the telly. It was a chance to back a team that might actually win something, and if they didn't, well, it wouldn't hurt like when Town get relegated.

But then I realised why Town would never be as competitive a side again as they were under George Kerr and Dave Booth, when I first started going. TV and attendance money was shared out much more evenly between clubs, and in 1984 we finished fifth in what is now called the Championship. This can never be repeated because the rich clubs decided to keep all the cash by forming the Premiership.

And then, when you're watching England, you're supposed to support players from the Premiership – the very organisation that took the bread from Town's mouth.

Paradoxically, it's also less attractive to watch the national team because it's no longer very different from watching Grimsby. Only a fool would still describe England as "a team that might actually win something". After Israel beat Russia, for example, and England briefly had a chance again to qualify for Euro 2008, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard immediately talked up their chances of winning the tournament.

There were also shades of England in Russell Slade's Mariners team. Specifically, in that season we were awarded about 80 penalties and from only one of them the ball didn't end up in the North Sea.

Most pertinent of all is the issue of management. Managers of both England and Grimsby have to try and motivate players who would sooner be elsewhere – at England, back with their Premiership sides; at Grimsby, with clubs that have nice warm changing rooms and fans who don't jeer every misplaced pass.

And for both teams, of course, the big risk involved in changing managers is that none of the candidates whose names are the first to be mentioned have any interest at all in taking on an impossible job. Martin O'Neill is staying at Villa, Arsene Wenger won't leave Arsenal, and Nigel Clough is having another fine season at Burton Albion.

Labels: booth, clough, england, failure, gerrard, kerr, lampard, managers, o'neill, premiership, slade, wenger

Town haven't always been rubbish, and at Barnet tomorrow they may suddenly be good again. But just now, it has to be said, they are a bit rubbish. So how do we bear this maddening state of affairs without going crazy? A range of strategies is available, each with a distinct set of advantages and disadvantages.

The most straightforward of these is not to support them any more. In its favour, this is an elegantly decisive solution, with no messy loose ends, and could save thousands of pounds over the years. Its one minor drawback is that it clearly marks you out as the sort of childishly petulant, weak-minded, thin-blooded, traitorous coward who is often found sharing the best lifeboat with the rats as the ship plunges fatally beneath the slurping waves.

A second approach is to keep supporting the club, but to call for the manager to be sacked. This is great, because it allows you to blame someone for the team being rubbish, and nowadays we need to blame someone for everything that's wrong, even if it's not really anyone's fault (or our own fault). On the down side, calling for the manager to be sacked can leave you looking silly if, as is very often the case, the manager is sacked but the team is still rubbish afterwards.

And if the manager isn't sacked but the team then does really well and nearly gets promoted, you can end up looking even sillier. Just ask the people who unfurled the 'Slade out' banner at Blundell Park two years ago.

To avoid these risks I have tried out a third kind of coping strategy. This is to keep supporting the club, without calling for the manager to be sacked, but to try and forget that you support the club when you get home from the match, until you have to go to the next one.

This is fine so long as there are loads of things to take your mind off the football, but it's that much harder to block out the rubbish match you just watched when you get home and remember that the new series of Doctor Who doesn't start until the spring.

It's also much easier if you can get home on a Saturday night and then not spend the next five days worrying about what to write in your next column for the Telegraph, or not have to write, edit or upload copy for Cod Almighty five days a week. Although actually that might be just me.

So it'll have to be the same old approach as always. Keep supporting, keep a sense of perspective – and win, lose or draw, there's always a pint at the end of it. Or does that just sound crazy?

Labels: barnet, blame, cod almighty, coping strategies, denial, doctor who, managers, slade, support