Strange Sense of Unreality As Cardiff Game Approaches

Is it just me, or is there something missing at the moment? Today sees our biggest game since...well since that victory at Old Trafford that kept us up or that home victory over Wigan that all but did so...but my guts haven't started churning yet for some reason. It's as if I am in a bubble, somehow protected from all the stress and anxiety.

On the way into work today I witnessed a motor cyclist killed in a collision with a lorry, and perhaps that has put things into perspective. Think about the chances graph that brought the motor cycle and the lorry together at the exact same point in the road at exactly the same time this morning. Had either driver started his journey a second or two earlier or a second or two later, the accident would not have happened. Perhaps one of them couldn't find his keys this morning causing a seemingly irrelevant delay which actually made the collision inevitable. Fate is so fickle, life is so fragile, planning carries no guarantees.

The entire season now comes down to 180 minutes of football and our happiness and misery hang, stupidly, on the outcome. At the end of the day, what does it really matter? Bolton lost 4-1 last night and slipped closer to relegation, but Fabrice Muamba is alive and smiling. What is more important when all is said and done?

I have signed a truce with regard to Allardyce and I've found it has left me with very little to say. We know how we will set up - 4-5-1 - and after our performance at Leicester nobody can gripe about that. We pretty much know the team too. Maybe Collison, maybe Lansbury is what it boils down to doesn't it? We know the threat - Whittingham and we know how important it is not to concede free kicks in our final third. But the two drivers this morning knew the dangers of colliding and that didn't stop it happening.

Jack Collison would, of course, understand what I am driving at if he read this article. There are bigger things in life. It's a game of football played over two legs, and may the better team win given we finished above Cardiff in the table. It will be intense but it's in our interests to take the temperature down a notch or two. Let's not reduce the game to blood and thunder, if class outs, Whittingham apart, we should progress without too many difficulties. Let's get behind the boys, let's get behind Allardyce and let's keep in mind that accident this morning...if it all goes wrong, at least it isn't the end of the world!