Waiting for a Bubble to Burst

What is it about being a football fan that makes you veer from blind optimism to the darkest pessimism? It isn’t even hard to hold both positions almost simultaneously as the chants of “Super [insert team name] Super [team] FC, By Far the Greatest Team the World has ever seen” tend to come equally if not more often when the team is doing badly and facing relegation than when they’re about to pull off an easy victory. Indeed, it is probably easier to do this than to be purely positive, at least for me – the ironic (-ish) “We are the Barcelona of the lower leagues” song that Brentford fans have been singing for a few seasons makes me feel uneasy, even when it is during a success like winning the League 2 title at Darlington.