On the final day of this crazy season, surely chaos is the only logical conclusion
It's been a long journey, but I'm at peace with whatever happens
Recently, gamblers posing as scientists ran a study – could AI correctly predict the outcome of football matches based on the huge amount of data available? Tl;dr: It couldn’t. We love this game because it defies logic and expectation – and this season exemplifies that. But my word, it’s been hard work.
How this Argyle team, that got stuffed by a biblically poor Northampton in November, could grab a play-off place against the same opposition in May defies logic.
No AI could have looked at any metric of our pre-Christmas form and deduced that this was possible.
Being so agonisingly close naturally leads to the temptation to dwell on what-ifs.
What if we had been half competent for the first part of the season?
What if we had beaten 10-man Bolton?
What if Tolaj hadn’t thrown his toys against Northampton and taken that three-game ban?
What if we hadn’t choked against Exeter?
However, I’ve chosen not to drive myself mad with these types of questions. The team has shown the type of spirit and fight that should transcend the final league position. As I wrote last time, new heroes have been created. And there’s also a nagging logic that if we hadn’t been so mindbendingly bad in the first half of the season, would we be where we are today?
What if we hadn’t given Bim Pepple serious minutes in a 4-4-2? What if we hadn’t signed Curtis in the January window? Would we simply be languishing in 14th, playing the brand of crabball we intended all along?
In this crazy season, it feels like anything is possible. It’s why I believe the results can go our way tomorrow, against the odds. Equally, losing to Northampton with Stevenage and Luton drawing also feels completely plausible. With word of a post-awards night "stomach bug” ripping through the camp, it feels like chaos is the only logical conclusion to this season.
There’s plenty of time this summer to discuss ownership, finances, personnel, release clauses, and all the other marco-nonsense that comes part-and-parcel of modern football.
But as we sit on the brink of euphoria or nagging disappointment, let’s take a moment to consider that it’s still the unpredictability of football, and the senseless highs and lows, that make it what it is.
COYG.