We’re on the road to somewhere...

You feel this tension too right? That cruel mistress, hope - still torturing you as you reflect and look forward to the season's end.

With every result you find yourself still holding on to those last couple straws, one far more stable than the other.

I find myself talking myself down often - trying to tell myself that hope is the old enemy - usually in the midst of one of the many disputes raging about how we’re actually doing on the pitch.

I was disappointed with the Plymouth result, I knew they were a strong side at home and I was nervous heading into the game, but I believed that we could get a result.

We did indeed get a result, not the one we would’ve preferred of course, and in the immediate aftermath I found myself incredibly angry about what I consider a missed opportunity - but we didn’t lose and that is equally as vital.

Photo by Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images

Taking a glance at the League One table right now is enough to drive any of the fans of those top eight clubs insane - all were equally capable of securing their final places, all were capable of securing automatic promotion at various stages in the past several months and yet… here we all are. Scrapping in the dirt, some of us are managing against all odds to lose games we should be winning in quick succession, and some of us - Sunderland in particular - are managing against significant odds to maintain an unbeaten run at home and away.

Only to glance again at the table as a Sunderland fan, you may find yourself wondering just how we haven’t managed to actually… move.

We are getting the results we need but we find ourselves a little bit at the mercy of luck, and by luck, I really mean we’re at the mercy of everyone else somehow managing to fail in spite of the fact the odds are often stacked in their favour.

These final few matches from our perspective look incredibly tantalising, we are still on the road to promotion despite every obstacle we’ve placed in our own path - it’s still so achingly close, so… possible.

There is still as I write an extremely slim possibility of automatic promotion, it’s incredibly unlikely and nobody at all should even consider it, but when has that ever stopped us?

We are by our nature and by the nature of competition in a situation where anything could happen, and anything undoubtedly will.

If this season has taught us anything - if our time in this division has taught us anything - it’s that unpredictability at this level is inevitable.

We just need to hold it together a little bit longer, hope the lads have what it takes to push us beyond all the uncertainty, and that Alex Neil can be the man who - by hook or by crook - drags us off the figure-of-eight track we’ve been tearing around as a club these past few years, and get us back out on that open road to somewhere... anywhere but here.