Who'd be a Wimbledon fan?

Supporting a football team can be one of the most depressing and soul-destroying experiences life can throw at you. To illustrate this author Nick Hornby once said, 

"The natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score." 

Well, he is an Arsenal fan! In all seriousness, the occasional euphoria gained after a 96th winner is put into perspective by too many heavy defeats at home to a team at the bottom of the league.

As an AFC Wimbledon fan sucks at this precise moment! Today we drew away at Harrogate. Normally you'd be happy with such a result. A long away trip against a team who are no better or worse than you, a draw is arguably a fair result. The trouble is that having been 2-0 up today with 86 minutes gone only to draw having conceded two late goals, it feels like a loss.

Unless you're a Premier League team owned by a conglomerate with deep pockets and an insatiable appetite for success, your team has to expect the odd, "Oh FFS!" result. It is part of the price for devoting all that time and money to follow your team. After all, if you won four or five nil every single week, the thrill and excitement would soon disappear. The real reason we do it is that we enjoy the misery of not always winning. It gives us a reason to moan and cry into our beer with our friends.

Of course, there are limits. We Wimbledon fans know all about limits. The hiatus of the club's move to (cough) Milton Keynes in 2002 is precisely why we exist as AFC Wimbledon today. It is also why that football team in Buckinghamshire is despised by the football fraternity well beyond London SW19.

We're near one of those limits this season. Some fans think we've already gone well past it. What limit is that? Throwing away games from winning positions. We've dropped more points from winning positions than any other side in the EFL. Just how many points is that?

71!

Yes, that's right. 71 points would normally be enough to reach a playoff place at the season's end. It's also head and shoulders more points that we've lost than any of the other contenders. It beggars belief.

We fans are struggling to explain why the team seems so incapable of winning a game after leading by two goals. What is especially galling is that more than a few of the recent capitulations have happened in the last five or ten minutes. Is it poor game management, tactics, or inexperience?

Whatever it is, can it please stop? It's boring now.