And just like that Forest’s Games In Hand are gone. They are worse off now than they were when we played them at Loftus Road a few weeks ago, which has gotten me thinking that there is a trend in football where we love to count our chickens long long before they hatch. This trend of predicting seems to be joined in holy matrimony with the ever exciting subject of statistics.
The line coming out of Loftus Road right now is that every game remaining is a cup final and as cliched as this is it is perhaps not as cliched as ‘we’ll take each game as it comes.’ The latter is the mantra of any team playing well with a big prize or fixture on the horizon, by all means Q.P.R have been doing well this season when it comes to keeping a perspective on things and not projecting forward. The fans have not. The mood swings in the pubs and across the message boards are vaster than Charlie Sheen’s ego. We draw a game and it’s all over, we win a game and we’re going up as Champions. This trend is true of any club but recently Q.P.R fans have found a new vocation for themselves, statisticians. 2 points per game, average promotion total and stats compared to previous Champions have been the topic of many a conversation. Fans clamor to predict the scores of coming results for the next month as well as pinning down the definitive number of wins we need to reach the Promised Land. This is all made worse by the bloody BBC Predictor which inevitably ends up with 5 teams on 96 points Q.P.R on 87 and the rest of the table not gaining a single result all season. Statistics and predictions are driving me mad!
A few weeks ago everyone came unstuck with their predictions when Q.P.R managed to pick up just a point at bottom side Preston. This was supposed to be our banker, an easy three points. It seems there was a large disparity between the number of eggs and chickens. For the best example of fans predictions being vastly off we need to travel across to North London last Sunday for the Carling Cup Final between Arsenal and Birmingham. It was supposed to be the dawn of a trophy leaden era for Arsenal and you’d be forgiven for thinking there was nobody else competing for silverware that day, indeed Szczesny and Koscielny definitely seemed to forget anyone else was on the pitch. So Arsenal remain as barren as Leon Knight’s credibility, until last night when Chelsea transpired to beat Man U thus blasting open the title race. ‘If we beat United at the Emirates we have a chance because they still have to play Chelsea and Liverpool at Anfield’ it sounds like the Gunners are suffering from countyerchickensitus.
And so with 12 games to go and a supposedly easier run in where does this leave the Q.P.R fans? Should we sit on the toilet all day every day due to nerves? Should we be coming up with a mathematical formula to correctly predict how what shade of green the grass is in relation to Swansea’s title push? No, we should sit back and enjoy it, like the Birmingham fans did on sunday. Very few things are certain in football, what is certain is that we have a great manager and team who we should be very proud of. So stop predicting and counting chickens or else we could end up looking like lame ducks.
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