There is a general concept across football known as the ten-to-three feeling. It arrives just before the season begins (ten minutes before the tradition 3pm kick-off time), and is a state of perfect optimism and peace.
The season has yet to begin, and thus your side are warmly cosseted away from the terrors of reality: that your football team are, in fact, pretty crap, and eight months of dedicated misery await.
But ten minutes before the season begins, everyone is level on points, and anything can potentially happen.
Spare a thought for Hull City supporters, who are experiencing a very perverse ten-to-three at the moment. For theirs is more akin to a 2.50am feeling: they are stumbling around town looking for a chipper and desperately trying to avoid getting in a fight/vomiting, having been kicked out of a nightclub.
The club has descended into farce. We are aware of the fact that Steve Bruce has left as a result of his not being backed in the transfer market, and many of you will recall the long-running dispute with the new owner regarding his attempts to rename the club as Hull City Tigers.
The shambles strays beyond this, however.
A Hull City fan and blogger has tweeted out a comprehensive list of issues besetting his club as they return to the Premier League. Here it is, and it makes for fairly sobering reading:
The state of H*** C***. Have I missed anything? #hcafc pic.twitter.com/VCy5vJjP2h
— Rick (@HullCityLive) August 1, 2016
Good grief. In further bad news, the club have agreed to sell key midfielder Mo Diame to Newcastle (in the flippin' Championship), and are still managerless, and have now turned their attention to Gianfranco Zola.
The season begins in 12 days, and Hull are 8/11 to be relegated. Get on it, it's buying money.
