That little bit of hope the Bolton game gave us – do you remember that? Of course you do. It’s still clinging to the edges of the week like smoke that hasn’t quite dispersed. Only last Saturday, wasn’t it? And yet it already feels like some impossible event we all dreamed together. A well‑deserved win  against the team sitting third in the league.

And didn’t something stir inside us? Something half‑ridiculous, half‑wondrous? That mad sense that maybe, just maybe, an outrageous miracle was stretching its limbs beneath the surface, preparing to reveal itself to the world.

And then Tuesday night at Doncaster happened. And then today at Wycombe happened.

I think, deep down, we all knew exactly how things would work out at Wycombe. We’ve read the script. We’ve seen the film. We watched it all unfold regardless, hoping for a different ending, which, of course, didn’t come.

One of the problems on Tuesday night was playing strikers who can neither score or hold the ball up. Today we tried something different, we started without any strikers. Well, why not? Something has to work. Unfortunately it didn’t.

Strikers who cannot score or bring others into play. What do they actually bring to the party? And I don’t mean that cruelly – but genuinely, what is left for a striker who cannot hold the ball, cannot bring others into play, cannot even occupy a defender long enough for someone in midfield to sigh in relief? Watching Sherif and Brown at Doncaster trying to, I don’t know, exist as centre‑forwards – it was like watching two people handed props they’d never seen before. The ball comes into them, and it just ricochets away, bounces off their shins, their knees, their entire sense of spatial awareness. They try to back in, they try to shield it, but defenders are just strolling in, leaning casually, taking the ball like lifting a sweet from a toddler who doesn’t yet understand possession. Effortless. Embarrassing. In their defence, Sherif and Brown are young lads learning the game, but they are both miles off League One right now.

Andre Gray. Hmm. A gamble that really hasn’t paid off. You can see there was once a very decent striker there, but those days are long gone. Let’s be honest about this – he looks completely lost in a Vale shirt. Ben Waine, half the world away, conspicuous by his absence. Jayden Stockley, injured, the treatment room seemingly his permanent residence.

And all this has left us in that familiar no‑man’s‑land up front, where every hopeful ball forward feels more like an act of faith than a tactical plan. We sense it in the stands too – we all experience that little tightening in the shoulders every time the ball reaches the final third, the resigned exhale when another promising move dissolves into nothing. It’s not anger. Just quiet disappointment.

Do we create enough chances? No. Not really. Not Tuesday night, not today. We move like a team wading through wet cement. Everything telegraphed. Everything predictable. No cohesion, no spark, no sense of adventure. Jordan Shipley, who had shown signs of improvement recently, has slipped straight back into hammering 40‑yard balls either into touch or gently into the goalkeeper’s gloves. His set‑pieces followed the same pattern: hopeful, harmless, wasted. Rhys Walters wandering about as if permanently stuck between decisions, never quite sure what he was supposed to be doing.

I can’t talk about that thing Hernandez did on Tuesday. You know what I’m on about, that twisty-turny thing he was doing inside their box, going-this-way-and-that, culminating in him leathering the ball out for a throw-in when there were about four Vale players all waiting on the edge of the area for a pass. I’m pretending it never happened. I mean, what even was he thinking?

Eli Campbell. You have to feel sorry for the lad. You almost don’t want to say it, because he’s been steady enough in recent weeks – he’s not spectacular, not eye‑catching, but certainly dependable. He’s done ok. He’s been alright. But at Doncaster, he just unravelled. Completely. Everything he tried turned inside out. Positionally all over the place, touches misfiring, clearances looping, the lot. And that own goal? The sort of moment where time slows down and you can see it forming half a second before it happens but you’re powerless to stop it. Horrific. Absolutely horrific. You could feel the whole stadium gasp, wince, go quiet in a way only utter disbelief can produce. He wasn’t much better today.

So, today ended Wycombe 4-0 Port Vale. And it hurts. It hurts because we care. It hurts because we love Port Vale deeply.

It hurts because even when we stand there, telling ourselves and anyone who asks that we had already accepted relegation, accepted it way before Christmas – moved on, dealt with it – there’s always that last stubborn ember glowing inside us. That stupid, fragile, wonderful ember that refuses to go out until the league table itself drops the final curtain. Mathematics: the cold executioner. Hope: the warmest, cruellest accomplice. The worst of all evils, and yet the one we keep inviting back in.

And there’s something else, a new cruelty for us to contend with –  it began on Monday when the Chelsea tickets were released.  Late night visitations from the footballing gods, descending upon us when all is quiet and dark. They arrive without knocking, drifting into the loneliest corners of our sleeping minds,  whispering their wicked little miracles: Stamford Bridge… The FA Cup… remember that night… Everton…what if… why not… Ray Walker… Tottenham… stranger things have happened, haven’t they? And suddenly you’re awake again, heart thumping, caught between the dread of reality and the intoxicating perfume of impossible dreams.

And that question, that question the gods have placed inside your skull, that question which is now running on repeat: What if Chelsea shit the bed on Saturday?

Can we ever be free from this? From expectation, from longing, from the eternal ache of loving something that has no obligation to love us back? No. Of course not. And deep down we know we don’t actually want to be.

It’s the price of devotion. It’s what it means to feel alive.

And do you know what? Only a fool would choose to live without this divine madness.