As the season entered its final weeks, football once again demonstrated its remarkable ability to identify precisely where your optimism lives before stamping on it repeatedly.
The defining moment came against Roma.
With the title race balanced on a knife edge, we found ourselves trailing late into the game. Time was disappearing, the championship with it, until a moment arrived that felt so perfectly scripted it was almost suspicious.
A sixteen-year-old academy graduate was thrown into the chaos. Youth, fearlessness and absolutely no appreciation of the pressure surrounding him. Within minutes he slipped a perfectly weighted pass through the Roma defence, allowing us to score a dramatic late equaliser.
One-all.
The stadium erupted.
For a brief moment, everything made sense.
Every Football Manager save eventually develops a narrative of its own, and this felt like ours. The fearless youngster. The late goal. The title challenge refusing to die. It had all the hallmarks of a season destined for a glorious conclusion.
Naturally, Roma scored in the ninety-fourth minute.
Football has no respect whatsoever for narrative structure.
Looking back now, I know exactly where the title disappeared.
Not over thirty-eight matches.
Not over nine months.
In the ninety-fourth minute against Roma.
One point.
That was all.
There was another moment of curious timing during the run-in.
My first-choice goalkeeper suffered an injury that ruled him out for eight of our final ten matches. Injuries happen. Nobody complains about injuries. They are part of football.
It was simply… interesting… that the injury occurred immediately after my game disconnected from the server while Alex’s connection remained perfectly healthy.
I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Just as there was with the battery.
Italian football has always been famous for its coincidences.